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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 





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FIVE MINUTE 
TALKS 



BY THE 



Rev. Clinton Locke, D.D., 



DEAN OF THE 

NORTH EASTERN DEANERY, 

DIOCESE OF CHICAGO. 






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MILWAUKEE, WIS. 
THE YOUNG CHURCHMAN CO. 



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T «* LlBRAR) 
OF 




WASHINGTON 



BX 5<?3 7 



copybigbt by 
Tbe Young Chubchman Co. 



TO MY 
VERY BEST EARTHLY FRIEND, 

MY Wife. 



PREFACE. 



THE author of these short papers did not think them 
worthy of a longer life than that of the weekly journal 
{The Living Church) in which they first appeared; but the 
judgment of people to whom he ought to defer, and the 
urgent letters from many strangers decided him to put them 
in this little book. They are not very deep, nor are they 
very wise, but they give answers to many questions which 
present themselves to many people. He hopes they may meet 
with the approval of his fellow Churchmen, and that they 
may do some little good. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

First Sunday in Advent. The Meaning of Advent. . . 11 

Second Sunday in Advent. Judgment of the Thoughts. . 16 

Therd Sunday in Advent. Judgment of the Words. . . 21 

Fourth Sunday in Advent. Judgment of the Deeds. . . 26 

Christmas. Christmas Presents 31 

New Year's. New Year Castles 35 

Epiphany. The Torchlight of Epiphany 40 

First Sunday after Epiphany. The Training of Boys 

and Girls 44 

Second Sunday after Epiphany. Obscuring the View 

of Christ 48 

Third Sunday after Epiphany. The Future of the 

Heathen 52 

Fourth Sunday after Epiphany. The Attack on Christ- 
ianity 56 

Fifth Sunday after Epiphany. Does the World Grow 

Worse or Better ? 60 

Sixth Sunday after Epiphany. Is Christianity Going 

to Last ? 64 

Septuagesima. True Self-Examination 69 

Sexagesima. Some Words on Confirmation 73 

Quinouagesima. A Keynote for Lent 77 

FmsT Sunday in Lent. What is Fasting from Food ? . 82 

Second Sunday in Lent. Fasting from Amusement. . . 86 

Third Sunday in Lent. Lent Reading 90 

Fourth Sunday in Lent. Church Going 94 

Fifth Sunday in Lent. Lent Charities. ...... 98 

Sixth Sunday in Lent. Holy Week . 102 

Easter Even. Some Thoughts for Easter Even. . . . 106 

Easter Even. The Intermediate State Ill 



8 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 

Easter Day. Easter Thoughts 116 

First Sunday After Easter. Rolling Away the Stone. . 120 
Second Sunday After Easter. The Sneer at the Super- 
natural 124 

Third Sunday After Easter. Two Easters in One Year. 128 
Fourth Sunday After Easter. What Can we do for the 

Departed? 136 

Fifth Sunday After Easter. The Testimony of the 

Stones 140 

Rogations. The Rogation Days 144 

\siON. Ascension Day 148 

Sunday After Ascension. Character the Source of True 

Church Progress 152 

Whitsunday. Meaning of Whitsunday 156 

The Ember Days. The Ember Days 160 

Trinity Sunday. The Mystery of the Trinity 164 

St. Luke's Day. The Lessons in St. Luke 168 

Michaelmas. All Angels 172 

St. Simon and St. Jude. St. Simon and St. Jude 177 

All Saints. All Saints' Day 181 

General Subjects. 

How to Enjoy Riches 185 

Juggling With the Bible 189 

Why is there Eyil in the World? 193 

Fourth of July , 197 

Why do the Innnocent Haye to Suffer ? 201 

Haying a Trying Disposition 205 

Non-Doctrinal Sermons 209 

Rounding off the Corners 213 

Parable of the Unjust Steward 218 

The Twelve Hours of the Day. 1 223 

The Twelve Hours of the Day. II 228 

The Besetting Sins of Rich and Poor 232 

Esprit de Corps 237 

A Man the Head of His House 241 

The Failures of Infidelity 245 

Inspiration 249 



FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 



THE MEANING OF ADVENT. 

WE are now to begin again the Church Year 
and to tell off that lovely rosar} r , Advent, 
Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Ascension, 
Whitsuntide, Trinity, and all the fasts and festivals 
which the wise Church arranged long, long ago for 
our education. No matter what vagaries or views 
I or any other priest may hold about Advent or 
Easter, we are forced to read to the people the 
Scripture Lessons, and pray the appointed prayers 
which teach the Church doctrine about them. I 
cannot, if I am an honest man, stand up and preach 
from the pulpit that there is no final judgment, and 
then come back to the altar and pray that "in the 
last day when Christ shall come again in His 
glorious majest3 r to judge the quick and the dead, 
we ma}' rise to the life immortal." This is a protec- 
tion no religious body outside the Catholic Church 
gives its people. A113' preacher can harp for a 
dozen Sundays on the theme, for example, of no 
individual resurrection, and he can arrange his 



12 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

prayers and cook up his Scripture Lessons, and pick 
out his hymns, so that nothing would appear on 
the contrary side; but the clergy of the Church 
must say: "I believe in the resurrection of the 
dead," "Thou didst open the kingdom of heaven 
to all believers," "After this life may attain ever- 
lasting joy and felicity." 

Advent is so called from a Latin word, advenio, 
"I come back," and is founded on the express 
words of Holy Scripture, "This same Jesus which 
is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in 
like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven,'' 
and its object is to keep that Coming before the 
mind. The Church Year did not always begin at 
Advent. For a long time it began at Christmas, 
and in the Church of England until 1752, it form- 
ally began on Annunciation Da.y, a very appro- 
priate time; but for many centuries Advent has 
been the real starting point, and surely there could 
be no better time than just before Christmas to 
begin the sacred drama of the Life and Death and 
Rising of our Lord. 

You will however take a very narrow view of 
Advent, if you confine it to thoughts of our Lord's 
second Coming. His first Coming, and the world 
to which He came, must be just as prominent in 
our minds. He comes whenever there is a crisis in 
your life which brings Him more clearty before } r ou. 
He comes in Baptism and the Eucharist. He comes 
in a very vivid way at death, and He comes to the 
whole Church in great events, like the fall of Jeru- 



THE MEANING OF ADVENT. 13 

salem for example, which in the New Testament is 
so dwelt upon as one of His Comings, that cursory 
readers of the Bible mix up what is said about it 
with His last great Commg. Still the Coming to 
judgment is the great Advent thought, and if there 
be one thing more foolish than another, it is trying 
to find out when that Coming will be. The Bible 
tells expressly that no one but God the Father 
knows that. How then can you find it out since He 
reveals it nowhere? But it is amazing how from 
the very first, Christian people have thought they 
could guess it. Even the Apostles, as we can see 
from their Epistles, thought it would come very 
soon; and in the Middle Ages, once or twice a date 
was fixed, and while it sobered many and brought 
them to penitence, it hardened many more, who 
plunged in all profligacy, saying they would be 
damned any way, and meant to have a good time 
while the world lasted. A day was set some thirty 
or forty years ago by a sect of religionists, and 
many people made themselves white gowns to go 
to heaven in, and sat shivering all night on hill 
tops, thinking, poor deluded souls, that the second 
Advent would take place that night. 

As far as I can see, the world is nowhere near its 
end. The great body of the Moslems are yet to be 
brought to a true faith, and the vast compan}' of 
pagans to be told of Christ; the tremendous battle 
between good and evil to be fought to a finish; 
liberty and light to rise over our lands now sunk 
in political and moral darkness, and fair and just 
phase, and do not confuse realities with metaphors. 



14 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

laws everywhere to prevail; but what do I know 
about it? How can I tell how long or how short a 
time may be needed to get ready the* 'fulness of time, ' ' 
before which certainly our Lord will not come? 
Think how suddenly and unexpectedly changes 
come now upon the world, not only from phys- 
ical causes, like earthquakes, fires, pestilences, but 
from political causes. See, how by a flash of light- 
ning, the whole question of China and Japan and 
naval warfare changed, and then stop saying that 
the world cannot be near her end, because there is 
so much to get ready for it. God can work very 
quickly. Do not waste your time on the millen- 
nium. It is an obscure, fanciful subject, about 
which reams of nonsense have been written, but 
which is of no practical importance, and I give the 
same advice about the place where the judgment is 
to be. Who knows and who cares whether it is to 
be the valley of Jehoshaphat or on Cape Cod ? 
Everything in Scripture points to its being in space, 
and not on the earth at all. 

Christ's second Coming does not mean that He 
returns here to our level, but that we will be given 
in our new bodies those faculties by which we can 
realize His Presence, a Presence which has never 
left us. He is here, but He comes to us, when with 
risen eyes we can see Him here. Then again, do 
not think that by the judgment day is meant 
exactly twenty-four hours in which the whole 
awful transaction will begin and end. Day in 
Scripture, constantly means a time, a period, a 
The blowing of trumpets, the chariots and horse- 



THE MEANING OF ADVENT. 15 

men, the thunders, the signs in sun and moon, and 
the stars falling, are all vivid touches in an awful 
picture which is meant to convey to us deep and 
piercing convictions of the importance, the dread, 
the solemnity, of the last judgment. 



THE JUDGMENT OF THE THOUGHTS. 

A GOOD Advent theme is the " Judgment of the 
Thoughts." Let us consider it. It seems 
very terrible to have your thoughts judged. I can 
very well understand that I should have to answer 
for my deeds, even human law requires that 
strictly of me; and that my words should be 
brought to judgment seems right and fair, for my 
tongue has done more mischief than my hands, 
and words are really deeds; but that the thoughts 
of my heart, which have never come outside, 
which I would not tell to a living soul, that 
these should be paraded and I called to account 
for them, seems very overwhelming. Let us first 
of all remove a very common error on this subject. 
When I say your thoughts will be judged, I do not 
mean that unending procession which goes troop- 
ing through your heart, waking and sleeping, for 
dreams show that sleep does not shut off the 
unending march. We cannot help that stream. It 
is, to a great degree, independent of our will, and 
to my mind, is one of the greatest proofs of 
spiritual influences all around us. 



THE JUDGMENT OF THE THOUGHTS. 17 

Our Blessed Lord, since He was a man, could 
not help being exposed to this class of thoughts. 
He could not avoid having those thoughts of 
tempting God, of bowing down to earthly power, 
of wrongly satisfying hunger, which are recorded 
in the Bible. Their passing through His mind was 
no sin in Him, and it is no sin in us. Men can no 
more help this, than the clear lake can help the 
darkening of its water by the black clouds passing 
over it. The\ r pass and they do not stain the 
water; so with the great crowd of floating thoughts. 
Sometimes they occur so curiously and at such 
unlooked-for times, that you can only think of 
them as arrows shot into the heart by the enemy 
of souls. For example, you will be kneeling at the 
altar, anxious to realize as vividly as you can your 
Lord's Presence, when some wicked thought will 
flash into your mind. You hasten to drive it out, 
but it has troubled and tried you. Do not worry 
over the idea that you will be judged for such 
thoughts as those. You are no more responsible 
for them than a man gazing from a window is 
responsible for the rogues, and harlots, and drunk- 
ards who troop b} r in the passing crowd. But 
making allowances for all that, you know very 
well that you catch certain of these passing 
thoughts by the arm and say: " Hold on, I want 
to talk to you, and have your company." Just 
there your accountabilit}' commences and your 
judgment begins. You know very well that there 
are certain trains of thought which 3-ou welcome, 
which you entertain, which you love to have with 



18 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

you, and while they may be thoroughly demoraliz- 
ing, thoroughly corrupt, yet you let them run all 
over you, you shut them up in your heart. 

These are the thoughts which will be brought 
to judgment. These will enter into the account of 
your life. Human cognizance reaches not to such 
things, and therefore human judgment is so imper- 
fect, but God's judgment is perfect, and it must 
notice them. Let me show you why. A man sits 
at home and broods over a murder. He hates some 
one so badly that he wants to kill him. He plans 
just how he can do it. He goes over all the details 
in his heart, meeting his victim perhaps with a 
smile. He watches and waits for an opportunity 
to strike the blow. He never gets a chance and 
has to give up the scheme. No one in the world 
knows a word about it, but God knows, and He 
would not be a just God if He did not call that 
man to account for his sin, which want of oppor- 
tunity alone prevented from coming out. 

A good man may fall victim to a great tempta- 
tion to impurity. It is known, and the world judges 
him and condemns him, rightly enough; but is he 
any more guilty than his severest critic, perhaps, 
who has been plotting the ruin of some innocent 
girl, concealing from her even a suspicion of his 
intention, doubling and turning in the dark, with 
no eye on him but God's; and when some unforeseen 
accident makes him give up his plan, he wipes his 
mouth and smiles to think that no one is the wiser 
and no harm done. God does not think so. He 
could not be just and think so. He must take into 



THE JUDGMENT OF THE THOUGHTS. 19 

account the motive, the actuating principle, the 
leading thoughts, for they are, after all, the real 
basis of action, from them the outer life flows and 
on them it rests. If only the outer life is to be 
judged, judgment is a sham ; for I know so much 
veiled hypocrisy, so much hidden evil, so much 
unknown sin, and I take comfort in a time when it 
must all come out and some very smooth people 
stand more deeply condemned than some much- 
blamed sinners, for it will be seen that at heart and 
in thought they were far guiltier. 

Let me guard you here against a dangerous 
sophistry. The devil will often whisper to you: 
" You have thought this all out, and God judges the 
heart, and He has condemned you for it, and you 
might as well do it and get some good out of it. 
It will not be much worse." Nothing could be more 
false. Evil coming out denies more than one soul; 
while it is buried within you, it can harm only you. 
It is bad enough to have thought, to have planned, 
to have imagined a sin, but it is ten times worse 
to have done it, to have carried out the plan, to 
have made the imagination a reality. Do you ever 
think that bad thoughts crowd out good ones, 
and must be judged for that ? Two things cannot 
occupy the same space at the same time. If you, a 
man, load your mind up with thought of money 
making and gain, and personal advantage, how 
can unselfish thoughts crowd in, and thoughts 
about others, generous thoughts, thoughts of God? 
Or if you, a woman, fill up your heart with 
thoughts of dress, and parties, and admiration, 



20 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

and housekeeping, how can the life of Jesus get a 
hearing,*or a better life a standing place ? We do 
not go deep enough in our probing, we just polish 
off the outside. 

Let our pra3^er now be, " Create in me a clean 
heart, God, and renew a right spirit within me." 



THE JUDGMENT OF THE WORD. 

WE have talked of the Judgment of the 
Thoughts; letus now turn to the Judgment 
of Words . There is a storj^ that Faust, the inventor 
of printing, when his mind w^as full of the won- 
derful change his disco ver}' would work, had a dream 
in which there appeared to him all the horrible sins 
which the printing press would disseminate— lies, 
impurity, infidelity — and he felt almost inclined to 
keep his invention a secret from the world forever. 
Sometimes when one looks upon a child and thinks 
of all the ugly words that will during a lifetime 
come out of its mouth, one thinks that dumbness, 
after all, might not be such a curse. But this is 
rather sentimental , let us come to something really 
serious. 

Our Lord uses these terrible words: "I say 
unto you that eve^idle word that men shall speak 
they shall give account thereof in the day of judg- 
ment; for by thy words thoushalt be justified, and 
by thy words thou shalt be condemned." You 
must not take this text alone in thinking of the 
judgment. In another Gospel we are told that our 



22 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

deeds will be the point on which the judgment will 
turn, and in another, that our salvation hangs on 
our believing and being baptized. We must put 
all these declarations together, and we get the doc- 
trine that words and deeds and thoughts and 
obedience and faith are all to be brought up in the 
day of judgment, and each one to put in a plea. 
When our Lord says that for every idle word we 
will have to give account, what does He mean? 
Does He mean that all our words must be directly 
holy and our conversation only of heaven, hell, 
eternity, justification, the state of our souls, and 
the Church ? A great many people have thought 
so and taught so, but nothing could be more false, 
or more canting, or more tiresome. I never dreaded 
any parish calls so much as those on the people 
who thought they must talk nothing but religion 
to the minister. Nothing in the world can lead 
more directly to hypocrisy and unreality, than such 
a course. The greatest saint the world ever saw 
must of necessity have talked much of everyday 
things. St. Elizabeth was doubtless not above 
discussing with her cook the best recipe for sau- 
sages, and St. Philip Neri could talk chess by the 
hour. Just as insufferable as that judge would be 
who never opened his mouth but to speak of rul- 
ings and exceptions, would be that Christian who 
was forever preaching, admonishing, comforting, 
or expounding. There is a time for all things, and 
while our words must never be irreligious, impure, 
or unreal, God does not expect of us that they shall 



THE JUDGMENT OF THE WORD. 23 

always be sublime and elevated. He knows they 
will be often trifling. 

But beyond all the necessary talk about our 
business, and the arrangement of our families and 
our social relations, there are a thousand topics 
freely open to the Christian's lips. Why should 
not a Christian be witty and funny in the right 
place? Why shouldn't he tell a good story, light 
as air, perhaps — what harm, if it be pure air ? Why 
should he not discuss politics, art, all the questions 
of the hour? Pay no heed to that canting talk, 
"How can a woman with an immortal soul 
talk about clothes? " Of course she can, and she 
can talk a long while about them without its doing 
her immortal soul one particle of harm. She can 
talk too much about them, but for that matter, so 
she can about the Church. But our neighbors — 
certainly we will be condemned if we talk about 
them? Yes, if you talk about them slanderously 
and censoriously and with detraction ; but come, 
now, stop canting, and tell me how people can live 
together without talking about each other in some 
way ? It is impossible, and God does not expect of 
us impossibilities. Not only can a Christian talk 
freely about a thousand things called worldly, but 
it is his duty to try and talk well. A saint is all 
the better for adding to his saintliness the grace of 
bright, warm, agreeable conversational powers. 
No such words will appear to our condemnation. 
They are like the flowing of the blood, part of the 
necessity of life. 



24 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

What, then, does our Lord mean by saying that 
for every idle word we speak we must give account ? 
It is easy to answer. Idle words mean profane 
words, envious words, slanderous words, mocking 
words, ugly words, impure words, unkind words, 
false words, distrustful words, deceitful words, 
painful words, stinging words, bitter words, and 
foolish words. Can any one reading this cata- 
logue say : "My withers are un wrung?" Every 
one is guilty of some of this idle talk, and guilty 
every day, and there is no sin so common. Any 
quantity of idle words are heard in the pulpit, in 
the drawing room, in literature, and, above all, 
crying aloud in the newspaper. I can control my 
eyes, my hands, and my feet; but my tongue, my 
unruly tongue, how often it slips its leash ! How, 
when we think we have chained it down, it gnaws 
through the links, and before we know it is "run- 
ning amuck," striking right and left, and leaving 
scars which shall bleed for mam^ years. 

Words are so easy to speak. Open your mouth 
and out the}^ come in troops, but not troops of 
doves often, just flocks of carrion crows. And 
remember they do not fly away into space and dis- 
appear forever. They fly into the memory of God 
and are there waiting the account. There, man, is 
the profane oath which left your lips, not once, nor 
twice, but a dozen times a da^^. There, woman, is 
your slanderous innuendo, which you know had no 
foundation in the truth. There, bo}-, is the dis- 
obedient, the defiant, the impure talk which is daily 
corrupting your heart. There are the lies, the half 



THE JUDGMENT OF THE WORD. 25 

lies, the shaded lies, the black lies, all of them in 
the lifetime, crying: "Here I am, yon have for- 
gotten me, account for me." 

Is not this enough to shake the stoutest heart? 
What can any of us do but pray Him who is all 
love to accept our poor repentance and our faint 
struggle, and at the judgment to throw over this 
festering mass of idle words the mantle of His 
divine charitv ? 



THE JUDGMENT OF THE DEEDS. 

IN the xxv. chapter of St. Matthew there is painted 
a description of the Last Judgment, so drawn 
out in detail, so carefully sketched, that it has 
many times been transferred to canvas, and even 
now glows with majesty and terror on the altar 
wall of the Sistine chapel in Rome, the master 
work of Michael Angelo. As I have said before, no 
one description of the Judgment in the Gospels is 
exhaustive. The parables of the wise and foolish 
virgins and of the talents, and the texts com- 
mented on in the last two papers, show other 
grounds than those stated in this chapter on 
which Christians will be judged; but this one refers 
so pointedly to our deeds, that I must make it the 
basis of what I have to say. I have no doubt that 
those Catholic theologians are in the right who 
consider this account of the Judgment as referring 
to the judgment of that great multitude who, 
though holding false beliefs and environed by and 
educated in heathen or other superstitions, have 
endeavored to live unselfish and true lives. Those 
who have been on principle merciful, will be saved, 



THE JUDGMENT OF THE DEEDS. 27 

not by their good works, or by their sect, but by 
the intercession of Christ. They did not know 
whom they were befriending, but it was Christ. 

Do not let us forget that every human being 
belongs to Christ, and no matter how saved, is 
saved by Him ; and we are only lost by throwing 
off and destroying our true manhood, which is the 
likeness of God. But while this is so, and the test 
of good works may be the only test applied to the 
mixed multitude, neither Jewish nor Christian, it is 
also undeniably true that among the tests applied 
to us, this one of good works must stand out very 
prominent. These works will bless or curse us; 
and not only these, but all our deeds, every action, 
whether secret or open, whether great or small. 
This our conscience tells us. This needs no text of 
Scripture and requires no elaborate argument. 
You may struggle as much as you please, and shut 
out all unpleasant thoughts from every avenue of 
entrance ; no soul can always shake off the feeling 
of accountability, and every now and then the 
solemn words will re-echo through the heart : ' ' By 
thy deeds thou art justified, by thy deeds thou art 
condemned . ' ' We know that we will have to account 
for the deed we have just done, no matter how deep 
we bury it and how few know it. God knows, and 
God remembers. But we will confine ourselves in 
this paper to the judgment of our works of mercy. 

Six acts of mercy are enumerated in this chapter 
of St. Matthew, by which all will be tried. I. 
Feeding the hungry. II. Giving drink to the 
thirsty. III. Receiving the stranger. IV. Cloth- 



28 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

ing the naked. V. Visiting the sick. VI. Reliev- 
ing the prisoners. 

It may be said that none of these are peculiarly 
Christian acts, but I challenge you to produce 
any extended, concerted work, covering these 
points, which is not carried on by people who 
fear God and keep His commandments. Show 
me a man who is truly and heartily devoted 
to the cause of sick and suffering humanity, and 
I will show you that he is very near the king- 
dom of God, and cannot be an atheist or a con- 
stant and unprincipled sinner. Look over your 
own city, and you will find that the charities are 
organized and carried on by the followers of Jesus 
Christ, whose hearts have been touched by the 
feeling of His love, and who believe it will be asked 
them at the judgment: " What deeds of charity 
did you do ? " It is such a true and practical way 
of showing your Christianity. Some of you seem 
to think that " Good Lord, deliver us," said unctu- 
ously as you lean over your comfortable pew in 
church, will answer the purpose ; but at the judg- 
ment you will require a Christianity which emptied 
your pocket, which sent you out from a warm fire- 
side to see that a cold hearth was warmed by your 
generosity, which kept you all night at a sick man's 
bedside, which opened your door to the houseless 
wanderer, which supplied with unstinted hand all 
the material necessary for the asylums of Christian 
charity. 

Now I want you to notice that our Lord will 
say at the judgment of these things, that when 



THE JUDGMENT OF THE DEEDS. 29 

they were done, they were done personally to Him, 
and that conscientious people will answer : " That 
cannot be, for we never saw Thee." He will reply : 
" Inasmuch as ye did it to one of the least of these, 
ye did it unto Me." Is not that a wonderful, 
blessed, unexpected reply? Think of it. Every 
good deed that we do to the meanest soul on earth 
our Lord Christ says is exactly the same as if we 
did it to Him, standing in person before us. 

An army doctor told me that once in a militar}' 
hospital, some frightful cases were brought in a day 
or two after a battle, men whose wounds had been 
long neglected, swarming with vermin, and per- 
fectly putrid. He said to the Sisters in charge: 
" These men are not fit for you to touch, let the 
orderlies attend to them." The Superior looked at 
him with her calm ej^es, and said : " Doctor, I do 
not see those dreadful wounds, I just see my Lord 
Jesus Christ standing there before me and stretch- 
ing out His arms for aid." Let us try also to 
realize that the tenant of the hospital is Jesus lying 
there, the cold and hungry wanderer Christ, who 
had not where to lay His head. He will not forget 
one thing you do for Him. It is said in express 
words that He will remember even every cup of 
cold water given in His name. 

Do not delude yourself with the idea that if 
you have faith, works do not help save you. It 
is a horrible, soul-destroying error. I wish I 
could pass over the awful condemnation of those 
who are cast away to punishment, not for acts 



30 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

of cruelty and lust, dishonesty or evil speaking, 
but simply for sins of omission. Lazarus in 
some form had lain at their gates, and they had 
not helped him. They had simply led selfish lives, 
and for that, and that alone, must they hear the 
awful words: " Depart from Me, ye cursed." 

Lord have mercy on us! 
Christ have mercy on us ! 



CHRISTMAS PRESENTS. 

THIS is Christmas time, let us talk about Christ- 
mas presents. The}- are varied enough and 
cheap enough, and the crowds in the streets and 
the splendid shop windows show that they find a 
ready sale. Your own homes have re-echoed with 
the joy brought out by unexpected and welcome 
gifts, and may I hope that something of your joy 
has been sent down to homes where, without your 
help, the Christmas spirit, which we call Santa 
Claus, and the Germans, so much more beautifully, 
the Christ-child, could scarcely enter. If no gift 
from 3 t ou has found its way into any humble room 
this Christmas, do not lie down to sleep before 
you have dispatched it; and if you can carry it 
yourself, it makes it so much more welcome, for 
then you can add to it the kindling eye of sym- 
pathy and the warm grasp of brotherly feeling. 
There must be somewhere in your ken a Bob 
Cratchit, or a Tiny Tim, who will be gladder of 
the day for seeing you. 

But I want to ask you whether you have given 
anything to the Child who lay in the manger; and 
that is the point of this paper, the Christmas 



32 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

presents that His people should make the Saviour 
of the world. You may say that the Master of all 
the worlds needs nothing at my hands. He has 
everything, what can I give Him that would benefit 
Him? Now you do not talk that way about 
earthly Christmas presents . You do no t ask about 
the absolute need. You say: " I want to show 
my love and friendship, therefore I give this gift." 
It proves to a person that you have him in your 
mind. 

It is true that God has everything, but just 
as you or I would value something our little chil- 
dren gave us bought with our own money, but 
given with heartfelt love, so does our Lord Christ 
value the gifts we give Him, furnished by the very 
powers He has Himself bestowed. Remember that 
God, like ourselves, looks not at the costliness of 
the gift, but the heart of the giver. A man once 
gave me a costly present of books at Christmas, 
and I heard that he said, when he bought them : 
"I have got to do this, though I don't feel like it." 
Do you suppose I value those books? No, I hate 
them, and never have opened one volume. On the 
other hand, a poor woman once sent me a wretched, 
tasteless piece of worsted work, which looked ver}' 
dingy and out of place among the presents which 
lay around it; and yet to me it was the most prized, 
because I knew that she had given me the thing on 
which she had spent the most time and which she 
thought a work of great art. 

Let me tell you some things your dear Lord 
would be glad to receive from you at Christmas in 



CHRISTMAS PRESENTS. 33 

memory of His birth. I do not say that all of }-ou 
could give all, but God does not expect all to give 
Him the same gifts any more than we do. We 
would not like to have twenty silver pitchers of 
exactly the same pattern sent to us for Christmas 
presents at once. It is the beautiful variety, the 
boundless diversity of gifts from every human being 
so differently endowed from every other human 
being, in which God delights. One man may give 
God a hospital, a church, a college, and another 
man may give Him the sweeping of a room, the 
carrying of a message, the winding of a Christmas 
wreath ; but all these joined together make up the 
splendid roll of gifts from man to God, which the 
blessed One condescends to receive and cherish. 

I will begin with the lowest gift; I mean by that 
the one that tells the least upon character, and 
that is — money. Now, as I heard a fine preacher 
say the other Sunday, God could, if He had chosen, 
have sent down out of heaven into every hamlet of 
the world a parish church, all prepared for service, 
and every month He could rain down in some set 
place dollars enough to pay all the salaries and 
expenses of all the institutions of charity ; but He 
chose another plan for our own good and to teach 
us unselfishness . He has put that responsibility on 
us, and He has said in plain words: ''Whatever 
you do in that way, I, the Lord, will consider it a 
personal gift to Me." Have you, like the wise men 
of old, brought any gold to Christ this Christmas- 
tide, or have you given that worn out excuse, 
"hard times?" I hear so much about that, and 



34 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

then I go into society and see the ladies in their 
costly clothes, and sit down to some most expen- 
sive repast, and it is evident economy has not 
touched this part of life. It generally begins at the 
church. A woman said to me: "I feel so badfy, 
our income is so reduced that we will have to give 
up our pew." I replied in my blunt way : " Why 
not give up first }^our theatre tickets ? " 

Or again, can you not make your Lord a Christ- 
mas present of some wrong thing in your daily life, 
which you dally and play with and feel you ought 
to part with for your soul's good ? A man told me 
the sweetest Christmas present he ever had, was a 
little soiled note from his son, couched in those 
dear awkward characters fathers and mothers 
know so well, and which read: "Dear papa, my 
Christmas present to you is a for sure promise not 
to say one more naughty word." 

Give God something in that spirit. Or again, 
can you not give the Babe of Bethlehem now the 
gift of personal service? Can you not offer Him 
any power of your mind which used in His service 
may help people to know Him better ? Can you 
not give Him a heart of love and faith, or the 
example of a consecrated life ? There is no Christ- 
mas gift that would please your Lord like that. 
He, like all kings, prizes most highly, lov^al service. 
Think over these gifts, money, wrong-doing, per- 
sonal service. All of you can give the two last, 
and most of you can give some of the first to Him 
who gave 3 t ou all things. 



N 



NEW YEAR'S CASTLES. 



EW Year's is a great time for that delightful 
amusement, building castles in the air. Of 
course any one who spends all his time at that kind 
of architecture, will soon lower the tone of his mind 
and become a dreamer, walking amid shadows 
and battling with unrealities ; but no one can help 
now and then piling up those cloudy towers, to be 
dispelled in a moment b3 r the rough wind of daily 
cares. 

But I am not going to talk about impossible 
castles. I want to bring before you a fair and 
stately building, which it is perfectly feasible to 
put into real life, and build upon these shores of 
Time. What a very fine one you planned last New 
Year, and where is it now? There is a bit of 
ruined wall, a half enclosed chamber, a crumbling 
foundation, and that is all that remains, in many 
cases, to show for that noble House of Life which 
was so carefully drawn out a year ago. Oh, these 
ruined castles of the years gone by ! There is no 
picturesqueness about them like those along the 



36 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

historic Rhine, where ivy mantles the walls and 
time has harmonized all things into sweet accord. 
They are more like castles which have just been 
stormed, ugly, gaping rents where the bombs 
exploded, blackened rafters where the fire fiercely 
raged, mournful, ghastly places, which force tears 
from the most unwilling eyes, and speak of noth- 
ing save desolation, and wretchedness, and ruin. 
But what of that ? Need that stop us from build- 
ing any more ? Because our last year's plan failed, 
shall we make none for the year to come ? Would 
that be like buoyant Americans who are never 
daunted by one rebuff, but gather up their forces 
to make another trial? Would it be like men, 
brave men, who have will and reason left? Would 
it be like an immortal soul which can aspire to a 
mansion in the world to come ? Do you do any- 
thing like that with your worldy plans? When 
the house burns down, up goes a better one ; when 
the business fails, we start afresh. We proudly 
boast that as a nation, we know no such word as 
"fail." Let us carry out that maxim in the affairs 
of the soul, and build a castle which we will 
struggle to turn from air into a reality. Come 
and let us plan it together, map out its founda- 
tions, draw its towers to a scale, and then go to 
work to put it into heart and life ; for what good 
are mere castles in the air, no matter how cor- 
rectly they may be constructed ? Can any one live 
in them ? Can they keep out any enemy ? Are the}- 
any better than mere clouds, taking a thousand 
shapes as the wind moves them? Fra Angelico 



NEW year's castles. 37 

used to kneel down and pray before he painted. 
Suppose you kneel down and pray before you plan; 
pray for the guidance of the Holy Spirit. 

Plan the business part of it. Resolve that it 
shall be characterized by high and unswerving 
honor. There shall be in it no chicanery ; no undue 
vaunting of inferior goods ; no sacrifice of purpose 
to gain an unscrupulous customer; no forcing 
dependent clerks to make statements they know 
to be untrue; no sharp practice; no taking 
advantage of the work ; but that everything shall 
be fair and above board, free from pettiness, con- 
ceived and carried on in what I consider to be the 
true Western manner, in a large-handed and large- 
hearted spirit, scorning a narrow penuriousness 
and ever ready to assume its share in promoting 
the public good. 

Plan the social part of it. If you are a young 
woman, resolve that the year shall not be one of 
lounging on sofas with the last idle novel, a year 
of empty talk and silly trifling ; but that you will 
be of some good to some one, that you will try 
to study something, help some neglected family, 
care for some wandering child. Resolve that your 
talk at least shall be bright, and that you will 
know something, no matter what, if it will keep 
you from utter vacuousness. Thank God, there is 
a great improvement in young women in this 
respect. 

If you are an older woman, resolve that you 
will not bedizen yourself with finery which every- 
body knows your husband cannot afford, and 



38 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

the purchase of which must keep somebody out 
of his money. Resolve that your house shall be 
the scene of prudent management, calm endur- 
ance of domestic worry, of blessed home happiness 
and sweet content, a centre which draws the 
husband, a sacred school room, where children 
shall learn from mother's lips those lessons which 
sink deeper than all others. 

If you are a young man, resolve that your 
castle shall be at least the abode of purity. Shun 
from this day all those places which, as the Scrip- 
ture says, lead down to hell; break with all evil 
companions as ruthlessly as you would part com- 
pany with snakes; above all, seek the society of 
pure, good women, for nothing will keep you out 
of mischief like that. 

If 3'ou are an older man, resolve to place your 
life on a high and noble basis. Let this year see 
you more exemplary in your life, kind to all 
around you, your lips free from profanity and 
lewdness, your hands free from corruption, your 
heart free from malice, and your bearing the reflec- 
tion of what you are, a son of God. 

But our castle is not yet complete. Let us 
plan the religious part of it. Resolve that it shall 
be a year of prayer, regular, dairy, humble praY^er. 
Resolve that it shall be a year when your Bible 
shall become a book whose inside shall be as 
familiar to you as its outside. Resolve that the 
public services of the sanctuary shall be vonr 
delight, and your never omitted duty. Resolve 
that you will never turn awav from vour Saviour 



new year's castles. 39 

present in the gifts of bread and wine ; and if 3 r ou 
have not that privilege, resolve that in penitence 
of faith you will qualify yourself for it. And now 
the castle in the air is perfect. There are its glit- 
tering pinnacles, its halls, its presence chamber, its 
moat, its drawbridge; but remember, it is only in 
the air, not one stone of it yet laid. To work, 
then, hew out your material, chisel it into shape, 
build it up. Christ and all good angels help you. 
All good men are praying for you. Courage, for- 
ward, not a moment is to be lost. 



THE TORCHLIGHT OF EPIPHANY. 

WHAT a glorious chapter that one of Isaiah, 
the sixtieth, is, which we read at Epiphany, 
and how of all its words ring out these : " Arise, 
shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the 
Lord is risen upon thee ! " The light of the Gospel, 
the fiery cross of salvation ! Kindled in Palestine, 
it flew like wild fire along the blue ^Egean, and 
through the lovely cities of Asia Minor. The mes- 
sengers that passed swiftly along the Appian Way 
carried it to imperial Rome, and the seven-hilled 
city from her thousand avenues radiated it over 
the world. The dusky Egyptians embraced it 
with all the fervency of their torrid nature, and 
the streets of Alexandria resounded with hymns to 
Christ. All along the coast of Africa the watch- 
fires of Christ were kindled. From Italy it spread 
to France, to sunny Spain, to the blue-eyed and 
fair-haired Saxons ; over to England went the glit- 
tering torch, to Scotland, across the stormy 
channel to Ireland, and dancing over the waters in 
the frail boats to Iceland. Then to Russia and to 
Poland came the glorious news, and those vast 



THE TORCHLIGHT OF EPIPHANY. 41 

and savage tribes bowed the knee to Jesus. Then 
the new world was opened to the wondering gaz 
of men, and with the first galley came the Cross of 
Christ, the light spreading and spreading until 
every idol had been cast to the moles and the bats. 
Then hither it came to this fair land of ours, not 
brought first, as the Puritans do vainly talk, in the 
Mayflower to Plymouth Rock, but brought first 
by good Churchmen from an English port, and 
echoed in the Church's words on the shores of 
Maine. Thence it illumined this land, and we have 
caught up the torch and sent it over the far Pacific 
to China and Japan, to India. Yes, wherever the 
foot of man treads, the Cross of Christ goes with 
him, and the story of the Gospel treads fast upon 
the heels of the first discoverer. 

How this realizes the words of the prophet in 
the Epiphany chapter : "Lift up thine eyes round 
about and see. All they gather themselves together. 
They come to thee. Thy sun shall no more go 
down, neither shall thy moon withdraw itself." 
Yes, not to this or that man, not to man in this or 
that phase of progress, age of the w^orld, or stage 
of civilization, does this Gospel address itself; but 
to the common humanity which belongs to all, to 
the wants, and sorrows, and inward conscious- 
ness, which belong to man as man, be he philoso- 
pher or fool, king or slave, Eastern or Western, 
" pagan suckled in a creed outworn," or American 
with the new lights and wonderful discoveries of 
the nineteenth century. This is the reason of its 
universal adaptation to mankind. Other faiths 



42 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

have geographical limits and live in certain envi- 
ronments ; this overleaps them all, and takes hold 
of the Hindoo, the Japanese, as well as the Nor- 
wegian and the New Englander. 

I have not the time to show how the Gospel is 
adapted to all classes ; to the poor to console for 
the inequalities of this world ; to the rich, in teach- 
ing unselfishness and generosity ; to the ignorant, 
in giving a few simple truths, which he that runs 
may read; to the learned, in furnishing problems 
which such intellects as those of Augustine, Aqui- 
nas, Butler, Newman, have labored at and not yet 
solved. The souls of average men can be filled to 
fulness with the simple thought, Christ, the 
Redeemer of the poor, the Key of heaven ; and the 
souls of the gifted can be filled to equal fulness 
with the thought of Christ, the Architect, the 
Sculptor, the great and matchless Designer, as well 
as the Comforter of His people. 

Let us take humanity at its two extremes, the 
beginning and the end, and show how the teach- 
ings of Christ exactly meet the need. Take a child. 
You want to make out of it a good and useful man 
or woman. If you search all the creeds of all the 
ages, Hindoo, Assyrian, Roman, Norse, can you 
find any rule or any code that will serve } r our pur- 
pose like the teachings of the Sermon on the 
Mount? Is there any life of Jupiter or Odin, or 
Mercury or Brahma, which will serve as a model 
like that of Jesus of Bethlehem, over whom hung 
the star of glory? Do you want to teach him 
gentleness? It is here. Purity? Here is its very 



THE TORCHLIGHT OF EPIPHANY. 43 

incarnation. Noble views of humanity? Here is 
the first teacher of an universal brotherhood. Self- 
sacrifice? Here is the picture of a Cross. You 
may invent some new machine which will fill every 
workman with delight, but you can never invent 
any better way of training a boy than the teach- 
ing him to keep his baptismal vows. 

Or, take an old man, done with active life, 
aware of all its hollo wness, its disappointments, 
its broken promises, and its swift coming end ; has 
anything been devised in all this devising more 
fitted to comfort him than the sweet, calm radi- 
ance of the Star, which is Christ, lighting up the 
pathway to the grave, pointing to rest and peace, 
gilding the way beyond death, and leading up to 
glory ? 

In our hands now the torch of Christ is 
placed. Let us carry it steadily and hand it on 
firmly. We spend too much time in quarreling 
how it is made, or whether we have the right one; 
we do not seem to care enough how it burns and 
what light it gives. The fuel that feeds the flame 
is our love, our faith, our courage, our character. 
Pour in such oil as that, and brighter and brighter 
will the torch flame out over the sea of life, light- 
ing all tempest-tossed ships into the haven of the 
Star. 



THE TRAINING OF BOYS AND GIRLS. 

I REMEMBER, many years ago, when I first 
came to the diocese of Chicago a young man 
with a sense of very superior knowledge, which 
happily has long since been knocked out of me, that 
Bishop Whitehouse asked me to preach a sermon 
at the convention. I took for my topic, "The 
Education of Children," a subject with which I 
was, of course, at the age of twenty-four and 
unmarried, entirely unfamiliar. I have had a good 
deal of fun with that sermon since, and all the hard 
and fast rules which it laid down for the guidance 
of parents. I know a little more about the subject 
now, and realize what an awful responsiblity is 
this training of a body and soul, to take a place in 
human life and transmit the training. 

What a wonderful thing it would be if we could 
have a model nation, just as there are model breeds 
of horses, where unceasing care and keen intelli- 
gence had been devoted for a century or two to 
eliminating everything that was bad, and encour- 
aging all that was good ! Children from their birth 
subjected to the most perfect rules of hygiene, 



THE TRAINING OF BOYS AND GIRLS. 45 

trained to undergo extremes, hardy, capable, 
making the most of this beautiful engine, the human 
body, their minds presented only with the best les- 
sons, all past examples of successful evil kept from 
them, their spiritual nature fired by the constant 
presentation of the loveliness, the manliness, the 
womanliness, the majesty, the power of our dear 
Master, and trained perfectly in His school, the 
Holy Catholic Church. 

One of these days I, being an optimist, think 
there will be such a nation. It may be a long way 
off, but I see signs of it ; human life lengthens ; air, 
food, light, work, and play are more evenly dis- 
tributed ; the mind has been freed from many degrad- 
ing and foolish burdens. We have no hair-shirt 
saints now, nor saints who gained their sainthood 
by deserting their kind, and living in caves on roots 
and water; but we have saints who are so, because 
in the midst of a world of temptation they have kept 
themselves pure and unselfish. The good work 
will go on, I am not afraid, but it is not worth 
while to spend time wishing about things ; let us 
see what we can do for the children of to-day with 
the tools and material at our hand. Results can 
be obtained out of imperfect material by patience 
and skill, which far surpass what can be obtained 
out of better stuff with less care. 

People often think that if they could only bring 
their children up in some quiet county village, 
where it was always afternoon, their boys would 
all be virtuous and their girls would all be modest. 
Nothing could be more mistaken. I have ques- 



46 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

tioned many boys coming to the city from their 
country homes, and their universal testimony has 
been that the talk and the atmosphere of the coun- 
try grocery or the barn where the farm bo\^s con- 
gregate, was far viler and far more demoralizing 
than what they encountered here; that the examples 
of noble living, generosity, the brotherhood of men, 
the larger, freer life of the churches, were far greater 
stimulants than anything they ever saw at home. 
Many a girl has told me that the neighborhood 
gossip, the little talk of a village, the small ques- 
tions which absorbed whole families, were far more 
belittling to her nature than the temptations of 
dress, and displa3 r , and amusement, which presented 
themselves so glitteringly before her in the brilliant 
panorama of city life. 

Rest assured there is no better school, as things 
now are, in which a boy or girl can be trained for 
the battle of life than in a great cit\^, where the best 
talent has been converged for the development of 
mind and body ; where religion is draped in her 
loveliest garments ; where that wonderful instru- 
ment, the voice of man, utters its most persuasive 
sounds ; where, if the foe be pressing, the weapons 
with which to ward him off are most numerous. It 
is not in seclusion from all the foes which lurk in the 
path of life that the best and most useful men and 
women have been trained, but in the thick of the 
fight, where every one had to be on the alert and 
the guard could never be dismissed. Some tempta- 
tions may be lessened b} r a country life, but there 
are others, just as subtle, which take their place, 



THE TRAINING OF BOYS AND GIRLS. 47 

as hard to master and as damaging to the soul, if 
allowed to conquer. Browning's famous poem, 
"In a Spanish Cloister," shows very visibly what 
sins can be nurtured within the absolute separate- 
ness of a convent, from which the world is supposed 
to be shut out. 

Now, of course, I cannot in a " Five-Minute Talk" 
even sketch a system for training children. I can 
only mention one of many general principles. Try 
and use skill and not force. In the novel of the 
" Talisman," Cceur de Lion severs a bar of iron 
with one blow of his battle ax. Saladin throws up 
his silken scarf, and cuts it with his sword as it 
floats down. One used force, the other used skill. 
You can force a boy into your way, and you have 
attained your end , but at what cost ? You have 
engendered sullenness, and a burning sense of 
injustice, which often colors his whole life. On the 
other hand, you can so skilfully manage him that 
your way becomes his way, and he does cheerfully 
what he should do, and enjoys doing it. Can you 
do it with all bo} T s? you ask. No, you cannot. 
There are some bo} r s so mean that you might as 
well try to make silk purses out of a certain 
animal's ears as do anything much with them. 
God help you, if you have to deal with such a one. 



OBSCURING THE VIEW OF CHRIST. 

IF I were asked to put in one short sentence a 
definition of Christianity, I should say " devo- 
tion to Christ." You will often hear it defined as 
belonging to a certain Church, professing doc- 
trines, following certain customs. For example, I 
have heard it said : "I do not dance, I am a Chris- 
tian. I never play cards, I am a Christian." The 
essence of Christianity is a personal devotion to 
the person of our King and Saviour, Christ. 

Now there are several ways by which this great 
truth is obscured. Let us talk about some of 
them. One is by putting too great stress on the 
Church idea. It is perfectly unnecessary for me to 
state the absolute need of a visible and organized 
Church. Christianity, as far as lean see, would be 
perfectly dead without it. If that were not so, our 
Lord never would have organized one, or insisted 
so strongly on every one belonging to it ; but have 
we not often put the casket for the jewel ? If you 
were asked : What makes you a Christian ? would 
you not be very apt to say: "I have been bap- 
tized, confirmed, I go to Communion, I belong to 



OBSCURING THE VIEW OF CHRIST. 49 

the company of Christian belie vers." All true, but 
is the first thought in your mind, "I am a Chris- 
tian because I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and 
that belief moulds and governs all my life ? ' ' 
Remember, the only object of the Church is to 
bring the person of Christ nearer to you. Every 
ceremony has that in view. Why do we have a 
procession? To symbolize the army of Christ. 
Why is a cross carried ? To show forth suffering 
as the banner under which Christ fought and we 
must fight. Why are there lights? To bring to 
your mind the Light of the World. Why do we 
wear white ? As a sign of the whiteness and spot- 
lessness of our Master, Christ. Unless the idea of 
the person of Christ is kept constantly alive in you 
by your church-going, by your Communions, by 
your observance of ritual, by your Lent and your 
Easter, you are only holding a low form of Chris- 
tianity. I do not say that good does not come 
of it, that it does not elevate character, but it is 
very far below the Christianity of the Gospels. 

Then another thing that obscures the person of 
Christ is the common practice in the Roman and 
Greek Churches, of making the Virgin Mary the 
great intercessor with God, in the place of Christ. 
Her altar, or the one devoted to the saint most in 
fashion, is the one thronged. She absorbs devo- 
tions which should be given to Jesus alone. You 
might say to me: Do you not believe that she, 
with all the blessed dead, intercedes with God for 
us sinners? Yes, I certainly believe that. Why 
should we stop interceding for others because we 



50 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

happen to 'die ? I am sure the Blessed Virgin puts 
tip very fervent prayers for us, and so do St. John 
and St. Peter, and all the holy company ; but there 
is avast gulf between that pious belief and putting 
her, as is done in Roman and Greek practice, really 
in the place of Christ. It was the conviction that 
this cult was carried to extravagant lengths that 
made the compilers of our Prayer Book put but 
little on that subject before the people. Some in 
our Church blame them for this, but if they erred, 
it was on the safe side. 

Then another mist before the person of Christ is 
the system folio wed by a large body of people, 
which I will call for convenience the Moody sys- 
tem, and which makes feelings the test of a true 
Christian. If you feel good, you love Christ. If 
you feel you are saved, you are saved. I shall 
never forget the shock I felt on overhearing a man 
say to Mr. Moody: "I was saved last Friday 
night at a quarter past eight." Of course the man 
meant that just at that moment he had felt a great 
glow of excited feeling, and he took that for an 
assurance that his belief in Christ was real. Now 
there is no more uncertain guide about Christian- 
ity than our feelings. Feelings depend on weather, 
on digestion, on circumstances, often on the way a 
person has met us, or our business matters have 
shaped themselves. I am to go on doing my duty, 
no matter whether I feel pious or indifferent, glow- 
ing or dull. Those moods may change. 

Then another very widespread way of obscuring 
Christ is the idea that if vou are verv active in 



OBSCURING THE VIEW OF CHRIST. 51 

good works it proves that you love Christ very 
much; that a zeal for doing good is a zeal for 
Christ ; that it makes no difference at all what you 
think as long as you work ; that you may hold, or 
not hold, belief in the deity of Christ, the necessity 
of the sacraments, even the belief in a personal 
God, as long as you help in hospitals and reforma- 
tories, and run around with various societies. Do 
not think I would depreciate benevolent agencies. 
When a man loves Christ he will work for Him, 
just as when a man loves a woman, he will work 
for her ; and, like that, his work must spring from 
personal love, or else Christ gets no nearer to our 
vision. Any other work is the carrying out of our 
own views, or the views of some one we follow. 
It does not light up the face of Christ. Now differ- 
ent religious bodies tend to one or the other of 
these ways of obscuring Christ. We Churchmen 
are apt to exaggerate the Church idea; Roman- 
ists, the idea of other intercession than that of 
Christ; Methodists, the idea of trusting to feel- 
ings ; Calvinists, the putting theologies in the 
place of Christ ; and all bodies the mistaking of zeal 
for good works for zeal for Christ. I do not for a 
moment imply that any of these views blot out 
Christ. They co-exist with very great love for 
Him, but they do detract from the grand, perfect 
picture of Him which is drawn in the Gospels. 



THE FUTURE OF THE HEATHEN. 

WHEN I was a boy I was taught in Sunday 
school that all the heathen went straight to 
hell, that they with all their babies were eternally 
lost. That was the general belief then, and that 
is the belief even now where Calvinism extensively 
prevails. Only the elect are saved ; the heathen are 
not among the elect ; therefore they are doomed to 
hell. Short and convenient, if it were only true, 
and if there were anything in the Bible or in the 
Creed of the Church to countenance it. But just 
think in what consequences such a monstrous 
belief involves you. Of one heathen creed alone, 
Buddhism, there are 500,000,000 adherents. Now 
probably only a few of all these millions have heard 
at all of Christianity, and what they have heard 
was often just a sermon or two by missionaries 
who spoke their language just as Frenchmen who 
have been here two or three years speak English. 
Are all these vast multitudes to be sent to hell for 
not believing something of which they had not 
even heard? What frightful injustice it would be 
in God the All Merciful to doom them everlastingly 



THE FUTURE OF THE HEATHEN. 53 

for not doing what it was impossible for them to 
do ! No one can suffer in hell, however much the 
sins of others may have forced them to suffer on 
earth, who did not fully deserve to suffer; and how 
could these ignorant people deserve it ? 

When you are thinking about the lost, you 
must try and get some clear idea as to whom you 
mean before you put in all the uncounted multi- 
tudes who do not hold to Christianity or Judaism. 
Remember none are lost because they were predes- 
tined to be lost, or because God was tired out 
with them and gave them up, or because they 
could not reach a standard impossible for them to 
reach, or because they mistook the meaning of the 
Gospel. Every one who is lost, is lost by his own 
fault, his own wilful wickedness; for weakness, 
stupidity, or invincible ignorance can never damn 
anybody. People who know right and prefer 
wrong are alone those who expose themselves to 
damnation. You may say that so many of the 
heathen are horribly wicked; yes, but it is not 
wilful wickedness. The}' know no better. 

I have just been reading Parkman's histoiy of 
the early Jesuit martyrs in Canada. You feel 
almost as the Jesuits did, while you read, that all 
those Hurons and Iroquois were just devils from 
hell; and that unless they were converted, hell must 
be their portion ; but when you think calmly, you 
feel that they knew no better ; that those were the 
ideas of proper conduct in war or peace which the\ r 
had inherited ; that no man ought to be punished 
for ignorance ; and that as the Gospel standard of 



54 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

justice is God's own standard, it is impossible to 
think of Him as doing such a thing. No, let us 
think about the heathen as in some place where 
God is teaching them; where the Holy Spirit of 
God is enlightening them ; and that a great law of 
evolution from a lower to a higher plane is working 
with them. 

These terribly harsh ideas about the future of the 
heathen, happily passing away now, arose from the 
baseless notion that there is nothing good or true in 
any heathen religion; that it is all false, and the work 
of the devil. Now it is perfectly inconceivable that 
God, while He was revealing Himself more perfectly 
to a few, should have concealed Himself completely 
from all the rest of the world. A God who cared only 
for a few people in a little strip of land half as 
large as some American counties, would not be a 
very good God. I would not care to worship Him. 
St. Paul knew much better than that when he 
preached to the heathen at Lystra, and told them 
that the God of whom he was talking had never 
"left Himself without witness, in that He did 
good and gave rain from heaven, and fruitful 
seasons, filling our hearts with love and gladness." 
Or again when he told the Athenians that "God 
was not far from any one;" or again, when he says 
that " God had written a law in the hearts of the 
heathen, their consciences excusing or accusing 
them." 

St. James did not hold this narrow view when 
he said: "Every good and every perfect gift 
cometh down from the Father of Lights," not just 



THE FUTURE OF THE HEATHEN. 55 

the good gifts of Christianity, but every good gift 
everywhere. No human being anywhere can now, 
or ever could, think, say or do a good thing unless 
it was inspired by the Holy Spirit ; for there is no 
other source of good in creation than the one good 
God. There never was any great creed, or widely 
held religious belief, that did not contain many 
germs of truth, and very much that was good, and 
many leanings toward God. St. Augustine only 
formulates a great fact, when he says: " There are 
no religions without some truth." In Buddhism 
and in Confucianism,— this last creed being held by 
four hundred millions of people, — moral goodness 
of the same nature as we understand it in the 
Bible is insisted on. Of course all these heathen 
statements of truth are just like some glimmering 
spark in comparison with the splendid sunlight of 
the Gospel of Christ ; but still they show that all 
heathen creeds are not altogether without the 
power of drawing men to God. 

Do not say, what is the usej then, of teaching 
them Christianity ? We must teach that because 
it is nobler, fuller, grander ; and God wants all men 
to come to the fullest knowledge of the right. 



THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY. 



WHEN our Lord explained the Bible to the two 
disciples on the walk to Emmaus, and also 
at different times to the eleven in Jerusalem during 
the forty daj^s between His Resurrection and Ascen- 
sion, you do not suppose that he explained to them 
all the difficulties of chronology, geography, nat- 
ural history, etc., which come up now in the study 
of the Bible; told them, for example, that the sun 
did not go around the earth as Moses said it did, 
and that the flood was not universal. The world 
was in no such stage of advancement as would 
have made such teaching profitable or comprehen- 
sible. He doubtless showed them the great prin- 
ciples of Christianity as illustrated in the Scrip- 
tures, and above all inspired them with the convic- 
tion that no power of man or spirit could in the 
end prevent the triumph of the Gospel of Christ, 
and that made them stand steady under the fierc- 
est fire. Now, have you any such confidence ? Are 
you not one whit troubled by the noise and tumult 
of the attack on Christianitv ? 



THE ATTACK OX CHRISTIANITY. 57 

The assaults on Christianity^ are very r vigorous 
now and very insidious. The poison is wrapped 
up in the sugar-coated pill of some novel, or 
couched in the brilliant essay of some "littera- 
teur" or draped in the robes of some dignified pro- 
fessor, or scattered far and wide on the airy wings 
of some newspaper article. The comic papers 
make the Church and all its ways the butt of their 
jokes, and you come to think where there is so 
much smoke, there must be some fire. It worries 
and frets you. You say to yourself, "Well, per- 
haps I am mistaken, perhaps the Bible is not as a 
whole the Word of God, but is, as some say who 
put ' Reverend ' before their names just a collection 
of doctored old Jew morals, in which there is ' a 
grain of truth in a bushel of chaff." ' You do not 
give up, you do not abandon your hold on the 
Bible, but your understanding does not seem to be 
opened so that you say firmly and boldly, " This is 
the Word of God, this is the Lamp of the w^orld." 

Let me offer you some thoughts which have 
occurred to me and others as good props and 
crutches for the weak-kneed. And first, lay it 
down as a principle that you cannot be expected 
to overhaul the whole grounds of your belief every- 
time it is questioned. Suppose you had planted a 
garden and people should come along and say: 
"I do not think the plants are taking root, "would 
you think it necessary' to pull them all up and see 
whether that was true ? So when you hear the 
assertion that Christianity is false, or is one-sided, 
or is only half made up, or is insufficient, say to 



58 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

yourself : "I have heard this before. I have reflected 
on this. I have gone over the ground. I cannot 
remember all the arguments now, but I remember 
they were sufficient, and I have not the time to 
pull up all these things in the garden of my soul 
and see whether there are roots to them." We are 
all of us too busy to be every day hesitating 
whether this or that statement of Scripture is pos- 
sible of adaptation to something some lecturer 
says or some book states. Ought we not also to 
be careful about exposing our minds to the influ- 
ence of bad literature and infidel talk ? You would 
not, unless forced by dire necessity, go into a house 
with the yellow label " Smallpox" on the door; 
why then should you willingly expose your ears 
and your minds and souls to the contagion of 
infidel talk, infidel lectures, infidel books ? Much, of 
course, we cannot help hearing. It is in the air, 
but when you do hear it do not think you are 
called upon to overhaul everyone of your beliefs, 
and see whether they will hold water. 

Again, the opponents of Christianity are very 
noisy, and cry and shout and beat drums and yell, 
" Christianity is an old worn-out thing, and will 
not answer for the Twentieth century," etc., etc., 
and they make such an ado that you think they 
must be in the majority, and must be right because 
they are so blustering. Now, a little, insignificant 
thing can make a great deal of noise. A baby a 
month old can break up the most solemn service in 
the world. A mouse has scattered more than one 
company of sensible and well-educated women. 



THE ATTACK OX CHRISTIANITY. 59 

Remember, then, noise and assertion are no proofs 
of strength, or of truth; and if you will take pains 
to examine, you will find that the noise is made by 
very few people, and that the adherents to Chris- 
tianity are as ten to one in comparison. 

Then, again, do not fret yourself with the idea 
that the opposition is worse now than it ever was, 
and that the Bible and the Church are losing their 
hold on the world. Nothing could be further from 
the truth. I grant that many things which have 
been thought vital to the Christian Faith in ages 
gone by are dropping away from it, and views 
which once were considered rank heresies are com- 
ing to the front, and such things cause many good 
people to sit uneasily in their chairs and think the 
deluge is coming; but rest assured that never since 
the beginning of the world have the great rock prin- 
ciples of the Word of God, and the example of Christ 
been more firmly and widely held than now. This 
fierce attack upon your religion, just like the attack 
upon your country, which so many of us remem- 
ber, only ought to make you love it more, not 
frighten you. The very sight of cannon trained on 
the Church of God ought to fire you with a great 
enthusiasm, move you with a great love, weld you 
together in an unshaken hope. I tell you this cause 
is God's, and it cannot fail. 



DOES THE WORLD GROW WORSE OR BETTER? 

DOES the world grow worse or better? You 
hear a great many people say that it grows 
worse, and the most doleful and depressing sermons 
are often preached on this subject, but I am not at 
all of that opinion. I feel sure that the world grows 
better every day; that there is a very distinct 
elevation in human character, and a vast increase 
in unselfishness. By the world, I mean our world, 
Europe and America, for that will be enough for 
our inquiry. The vast millions of Asia and Africa 
are on such a very different level, that the same 
arguments do not apply to them, though I doubt 
not that even in their case an advance could be 
proved true. 

Certainly the world is better materially. The 
newspapers and the public lecturers may paint you 
dark pictures of the down trodden workmen, and 
the oppression of capital, and the miseries of the 
poor ; but when you compare the condition of the 
poorer classes with that of a century ago, you will 
see an astonishing improvement. The wages are 
far better. The working classes have a thousand 



DOES THE WORLD GROW WORSE OR BETTER? 61 

comforts now where they had one then. They 
dress better. They have better food and more 
amusement. The laws governing them are much 
more liberal, and they are considered far more by 
politicians and law-makers. Even the submerged 
tenth is not as deeply submerged as it was thirty 
years ago. Wretched as their lives are and hope- 
less as their state seems, mostly from their own 
fault, yet their story in the past shows a still more 
horrible mode of life and a still deeper degradation. 
The efforts now made to relieve them are more 
sensible, persistent, and extensive, and the work 
daily grows. 

Then certainly there is more general mental 
improvement. The "little red schoolhouse" mul- 
tiplies like the planted corn. Wherever a few 
houses are got together, there forthwith is found 
the one where children are taught. The cheapness 
of the newspaper and of the very best as well as 
the very worst books, puts a vast mass of infor- 
mation within the reach of the poorest, and it is 
eagerly accepted and read. The proportion of 
illiterate decreases daily. Great questions with 
which a century ago only a few of the learned were 
concerned, are now intelligently discussed in every 
four corners' meeting. In every cottage and in 
every tenement room are found pictures which even 
ten years ago would have cost a hundred dollars 
apiece, now by the new processes costing only a 
few cents. Parks, flowers, concerts, are accessible 
in every large town without any expense except the 
few cents of car fare. Contrast all this with all the 



62 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

dulness and crass ignorance of a century ago, and 
you will see that a man must be bereft of his senses 
not to recognize an extraordinary intellectual 
advance in the European and American man. 

Yes, people will say, materially and mentally 
there may be improvement and advance, but in the 
moral and spiritual life there is great deterioration. 
It is here the world grows worse. Now, if this be 
so, it is a most awful conclusion ; and instead of 
rejoicing in the material and mental progress, we 
ought to weep over it ; for men who are comfort- 
able and intelligent and yet unprincipled, are a 
thousand times more dangerous than impoverished 
and illiterate men. A clever devil is much more to 
be dreaded than an ignorant devil, because he can 
plan wickedness better and execute it more know- 
ingly. But it is a pure delusion that the world is 
morally and spiritually worse. You hear more of 
sin and crime because the sources of information 
are so multiplied. Anj'- lapse from right in even the 
remotest village is heralded all over the country in 
less than twenty-four hours. In proportion to the 
number of inhabitants, vice is much less than it 
used to be, only then the news of it was confined 
to its own neighborhood. The criminal records of 
fifty years ago show in proportion a. far greater 
average of crime than those of to-day. There is 
much more unselfishness than there used to be. An 
earthquake, or a flood, or a fire in countries thou- 
sands of miles away, awakens a response in our 
midst, and efforts are made to relieve it. We would 
not tolerate for a moment the cruelty, the indiffer- 



DOES THE WORLD GROW WORSE OR BETTER? 63 

ence to pain, the sight of human suffering, which 
marked the era of our forefathers. We have begun 
really to carry out the Gospel teaching of univer- 
sal brotherhood, though of course it is still in its 
infancy. You will hear that there are not so many 
saints, but it takes a great deal more now to make 
a saint. The standard of saintship is higher. 
Saints are not canonized now for wearing more 
prickly hair shirts and eating nastier food than 
anybody else ; or for remaining unmarried, but for 
deeds of real usefulness to their fellow-men. There 
never was so much interest in great spiritual prob- 
lems as now. Every prominent paper gives them 
a great deal of attention, and they are discussed 
in every lecture room. 

Of course there is much confusion in this dis- 
cussion, and the sea of talk casts up much mire, 
but that the feeling exists, proves that men are not 
so sunk in material things that they have forgotten 
loftier themes. They burn to know now, as they 
never did before, and woe to the Church that 
ignores this intense desire, and offers the hungry 
only stones and rubbish and stale cakes. When I 
contrast the number of men engaged in Christian 
work now, with the scattered few who took part 
when I was young, I need no other argument to 
prove to me that the world grows better. Five 
minutes are only enough to open this subject, but 
let all take hope. We are not going down hill to 
destruction ; we are every day mounting higher, 
and coming nearer to the presence of the Lord. 



IS CHRISTIANITY GOING TO LAST ? 

I HAVE been asked two very important questions : 
"Is Christianity going to last?" and "If Chris- 
tianity goes, will our morality necessarily go with 
it?" Let us try in a very small compass to say a few 
words about these two things. And first, I know 
the cry has been raised from the first century that 
Christianity would not last; and since I was a 
small boy, I have read in the newspapers and 
magazines that it was rapidly disintegrating, but 
it seems to me a pretty lively corpse. Christians 
are apt to think that it is now being attacked more 
fiercely than ever before, but that is a mistake. 
The fashion of the attack has changed, but it is no 
hotter than it has been before. Let us look and 
see if there are any facts to show that Christianity 
is dying out. 

If I heard a man say that trade was declining, 
and then looked about me and saw the streets and 
wharves crowded with loaded wagons, new build- 
ings for trading purposes going up in every direc- 
tion, stores at a premium, fleets of ships and trains 
of freight cars arriving and departing, and every 



IS CHRISTIANITY GOING TO LAST? 65 

token of a magnificent movement of all kinds of 
merchandise, I should conclude that the croaker I 
had heard was mistaken. So now, when I hear 
the cry that Christianity is dying out, and I 
look around, what do I find? Why, everywhere, 
splendid churches built with alacrity and joy, and 
the old ones restored, vivified, crowded, the sums 
given for the support of religion enormous and 
increasing every } r ear — and I know that keen, sharp 
Americans do not give their money to issues they 
consider dead. I find the band of the defenders of 
Christianity ready to meet every blow; and in 
every country, intellect and genius of the highest 
order serving under the Cross. It may be true 
that there are not as many churches in Maine or 
Vermont as there were fifty years ago, but there 
are not as many Americans there as there were 
then, and any loss there is more than balanced by 
the hundreds of churches every day springing up in 
other places. Talk of Christianity dying out, 
when every day in the year three new Methodist 
churches are opened. Wherever there is any life at 
all in the parishes, the churches are full. There are 
ten active male members of every Christian organ- 
ization where there was one fifty years ago, and 
that is a very great sign of swift-coming blood. 
As long as things continue at this heat, how can I 
agree with what I read not long ago in a well- 
known magazine, "that in the minds of those 
whose views are likely to become the views of 
society at large, belief in Christianity as a revealed 
and supernatural religion has given way." My 



66 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

senses tell me the contrary of this, for I see the 
fruits of Christianity living and blooming and just 
about the healthiest thing there is around. It 
shows itself no local, but an universal, religion ; 
not the French or the Armenian light, but the 
Light of the World. It is, to all appearances, and 
as far as its fundamental principles are concerned, 
as likely to fail as the sun. 

Suppose the belief in God and supernatural 
religion should be done away, will there be any 
sure grounds for morality to rest upon ? Are not 
the virtue of our daughters, the honesty of our 
sons, the brotherhood of men, gentleness, enthusi- 
asm, righteousness, bound up (as far as we are 
concerned) in the Christian religion, and as far as 
the whole world is concerned, in a belief in the 
supernatural? That is the second question. Scep- 
tics laugh at that and point you triumphantly to 
hundreds of men and women who are living per- 
fectly pure and righteous lives, and yet who do not 
believe one iota of Christianity. Let us see what 
that argument is worth. If a man were brought 
before you as an example of the possibility of living 
without food, you would ask how long has he been 
without it; and if the answer was, " A day or so," 
you would reply, " Let us wait a week and then 
we will see." So with these pure and good infidels 
who are shown you. Were they brought up and 
nurtured in infidelity? Were their fathers and 
grandfathers agnostics ? Not at all. They live in 
a Christian land. The}' breathe a Christian atmos- 
phere. They enjoy Christian protection. They 



IS CHRISTIANITY GOING TO LAST? 67 

inherit from long ancestries of Christian people. 
We must wait for a generation which never knew 
what Christianity was, which never was subjected 
to any of its modifying influences, before we accept 
examples of the possibility of morality without 
Chris tianit} r . 

But you will be told that there have been 
and are nations, non-Christian, which have 
recognized the great principles of morality. Yes, 
but there never has been any nation that did not 
join this morality with a religion, and when it lost 
its religion, it lost its morality. We know from 
the Greek plays that in Greece morality and relig- 
ion were inseparably connected, and when the 
Greek religion went down before advancing light, 
what do we find recorded by the greatest histor- 
ians? — fearful depravity in public and private life. 
When the Roman religion disintegrated, there 
rushed in upon the State a fearful anarchy, a hor- 
rible cruelty, a despair, a wickedness so amazing 
that we can scarce believe it. Take the mere shell 
of religion in the Fourteenth century and we find 
the mere shell of morality. Take France, where 
religion has been so derided, and what sort of a 
morality has come of it? — the universal worship of 
lubricity. 

But, say the haters of Christianit\^, we are 
developing mind and cultivating social science, 
and that will take the place of religion. Do you in 
business consider a man's education smy guarantee 
as to his honor and his reliability ? Is not an edu- 
cated rogue the very worst? Cultivate social 



68 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

science by all means ; but it is pure lunacy to think 
it can supplant the fatherhood of God and the 
brotherhood of Jesus Christ. Nothing but Chris- 
tianity now keeps'the stronger from totally swal- 
lowing up the weaker. Take it away, and the cry 
will go up: "There^is no God, and I will do as I 
please, and I will take your house and ship." 
With the Christian religion rises and sinks all you 
hold dear in'society, in your country, in life. 



TRUE SELF-EXAMINATION. 

LET us take up some points about the oncoming 
Lent which we may call " inward" things, 
which can be known only to yourself and God, 
such as self-examination, private prayer, struggle 
against sin, etc. While the effects of these must, 
of course, be evident to those who live with you, 
the causes must be secret and hidden, otherwise the 
effects cannot be produced. Take self-examination. 
One of the most wonderful things in this wonder- 
ful human nature is that we can be so profoundly 
ignorant of very great defects in our own char- 
acter, and pride ourselves on virtues which exist 
only in our imaginations. I was once asked by a 
parishioner of importance to tell him his faults. I 
said : 

"Do you seriously wish to hear, not what 
I, but what all who know you think to be your 
character ? ' ' 

"Yes." 

"And will you promise not to be angry ? " 

"Yes." 

I then painted him his picture as the community 
generally had drawn it, "nothing extenuate and 



70 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

nought set down to malice." He flew into a great 
rage, and said : 

" It is perfectry absurd. I am no such man at 
all." 

I do not think he ever quite forgave me, and it 
cured me of telling people their faults, unless 
obliged to do so. 

It is a very risky thing to ask even your most 
intimate friend to tell you your faults. If he does 
make a good diagnosis, you will not like it, and it 
will be the rift in the lute of friendship, or his affec- 
tion will blind his judgment, and he will merely 
confirm you in your false opinions. Do not sup- 
pose that, as a rule, the mean man thinks himself 
mean, or the fretful, nagging woman imagines that 
she is anything of the kind. You will hear it said 
that every one does know his faults, only he does 
not like to think about them, and, if he can help it, 
never opens the door of the closet where they are 
kept. This may often be true, but generally, as in 
disease, there are symptoms which the person 
notices but never connects with any grave malady, 
and is much surprised when the doctor, on being 
told them, says: "You have such and such a 
malad\\" For example, a person may notice that 
he gives unwillingry, that he calculates how little 
he can give without a twinge of conscience, that 
he is not interested in causes where much giving is 
required, that he sets great store by that sweet 
phrase, "charity begins at ho me." But when these 
symptoms are all presented to an expert and he 
says immediately: "You are stingy," the man is 



TRUE SELF-EXAMINATION. 71 

very much ruffled and thinks the verdict most 
unjust. You msiy say, "A man knows himself 
whether he is or is not an adulterer or a liar. ,, 
Yes, but I have talked with adulterers and liars, 
and each one had elaborated a theory for himself 
which made his particular case very different from 
any other. The facts could not be denied, but the 
circumstances leading up to the facts were draped 
and gilded and disguised, so that adultery and 
lying seemed very hard names to the guilty ones. 

Of course any man who is not a fool must have 
some knowledge of himself, some idea of the ten- 
dencies of his mental and moral nature, some esti- 
mate of the temptations which do most easily beset 
him, or he could not do his part in the treadmill of 
life ; but such knowledge is often very superficial, 
and just enough to carry the man on without 
glaring outbreaks. The first thing to be decided 
about self-examination is, " Do you really want to 
know yourself, or do you prefer to live in the fool's 
paradise where you now are ? Will you be resolute 
in probing to its depth v-our make-up, or are you 
content with the vague outline which you now 
have? Are you willing to face some ugly facts 
which are lurking under the thin veneer, and which 
you strongly suspect are there awaiting 3^ou,ordo 
you shrink from any such self-knowledge for fear of 
being made uncomfortable and uneasy?" 

There are thousands of people who would not for 
the world thoroughly examine themselves. They 
are too cowardly to face the disclosures . But we will 
assume that you reallv feel a desire to know what 



72 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

manner of man you are, and are determined to get 
at the bottom facts, what shall you do ? Now, in 
my opinion, the first thing is to go down on your 
knees and have a good hearty pray. Not a saying 
over of a dozen " Our Father's" or "Now I lay 
me's," as the manner of some is, but a crying of 
the heart unto God to give you some light in this 
matter, to open your eyes, to cleanse your under- 
standing, to give you courage, to drive away 
prejudice. I do not believe any thing like Christian 
self-examination can take place without being pre- 
ceded by such praying. Then take the table of the 
Ten Commandments and ask yourself questions 
about it. There are plenty of lists of questions 
which you will find very useful. It will never do to 
read over the commandment, " Thou shalthaveno 
other gods but Me," and say, " 0, I am not guilty 
here, I do not worship idols." Of course you do 
not, you couldn't if you wanted to do so, for even 
those wonderful }^oung m en and women who call 
themselves American Buddhists have not yet put 
up any graven images of Buddha ; but are you not 
guilty of idol worship in a very true sense — worship 
of the idol gold, the idol pleasure, or the idol family ? 
This will indicate the spirit in which the questions 
are to be asked . Go through the whole table that 
way carefully and prayerfulry, and if at the end, 
you do not know much more about yourself than 
you do now, I am much mistaken. 

God help you to put that knowledge to some 
use. 



SOME WORDS ON CONFIRMATION. 

LET us talk about confirmation. Without enter- 
ing into all the nice questions being constantly 
discussed as to whether it means this or that, let 
us base what we have to say on the following 
great principle. Confirmation is a time for begin- 
ning a closer religious life, a time for publicly an- 
nouncing that as for us, in the future our Master 
shall be Christ, and His army the one in which we 
will fight. 

No matter what else you may hold about Con- 
firmation, you certainly hold that. Now there are 
three general classes of people to be considered in 
regard to Confirmation. Children, adults brought 
up in the Church, and adults brought up in other 
religious systems. Take children — clergymen will 
differ about the age at which children should be 
presented, and some bishops announce that they 
will not confirm persons under a certain age ; but 
children differ very much, and many at twelve are 
able to grasp the meaning of the step they are 
taking much better than others at sixteen. If 
asked to name a general age, from which only 



74- FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

peculiar gifts and graces should induce a rector to 
depart, I would say, fourteen. 

In the first place, not much spiritual experience 
can be expected from children, and any profession 
on their part to have deep feeling about sin, and 
the dealings of God with the soul, should be re- 
garded with suspicion. I remember a girl of twelve 
coming to me to be prepared for Confirmation. 
She said that she felt herself the worst of sinners, 
and did not see how God could pardon one so vile 
as she. I said : " Nonsense, Mary, you are a very 
nice little girl, and have always been obedient to 
parents and teachers, and very conscientious, you 
are not the worst of sinners." On examining her, 
I found she had been reading the biography of 
some unhealthy and precocious child, and thought 
she must say such things to be a worthy candidate. 

St. Catherine of Sienna did indeed flog her- 
self for her sins at six years of age ; but St. 
Catherine did many lunatic things, and was 
about as impossible a guide for a Christian 
girl as could well be found. Any child who 
is not perverted and degenerate, who knows 
what truth is and honor, and realizes the father- 
hood of God, and the redeeming love of Christ, 
ought to be presented for Confirmation. Any 
child who will answer (not perfunctorily), when 
the question is asked: "Why do jovl want to be 
confirmed? " " Because I think it will help me to 
be a better boy or girl," is in the proper frame of 
mind, without waiting for any deeper convictions. 
The priest ought to see that children know the 



SOME WORDS OX CONFIRMATION. 75 

letter of the Catechism, and as much of the general 
meaning as can be imparted. Neither children nor 
adults grasp it all, and I have generally found the 
children of the class quite as well prepared intel- 
lectually, as a great many of the adults. 

Now about the adults. One class are persons 
who have never tried in anyway to lead a religious 
life, but now, pricked hj conscience, or from some 
crisis in their lives, or moved by the pleading of 
pastor or friend, wish to try. The}^ are often very 
hazy in their doctrine and ver\ r crude in their notions 
of a religious life; but if they do sincerely desire to live 
nearer to God, and are willing to do their best to 
follow the counsels of the Church, they ought not 
to be rejected. It will be found difficult to get men 
to follow regularly am- course of instruction. 
They will plead affairs, and you will have to be 
satisfied with their reading some of the many 
short and effective tracts, on Christian doctrine 
and the religious life. My experience is that the 
majority of candidates seem to have no deep 
searchings of heart, and no very moving convic- 
tion of sin. They are generally sincere and earnest, 
and I prefer those who do not make such great 
professions to those who do. A lady once said to 
me: "I know I am ready to be confirmed, for I 
have never played cards in Lent." I tried to show 
her some of the " weightier matters of the law," 
but the soil was pretty rock}-. 

Another class of candidates are those who have 
been sincere and consistent members of some 
Christian body, but who feel convinced that the 



76 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

Church is their true home, and that in her fold they 
will be able to follow Christ more closely. These 
are often persons of large spiritual experience and 
deep personal religion, and make some of the ver} r 
best parishioners and communicants. They do not 
need to be told what serving God means, but they 
need instruction on the points where the Church 
differs from the religious body they are leaving. 
The Christian life is the same in the Presbyterian 
body as in ours; prayer, sacraments, meditation, 
good works, find their place there as here ; but we 
know the inestimable advantages we enjoy as 
Catholic Christians, and these the candidate will 
readily appreciate. 

Confirmation is not, as so many seem to think,, 
a reward for having attained great eminence in 
holy living; but a step, and one of the first steps, 
in such a life. It contemplates evidently only 
beginners, and includes very imperfectly informed 
and very weak people in a spiritual sense. It does 
expect that those coming shall be sincere in their 
profession, anxious to grow better, and willing in 
humility to try the sacramental life, as the best 
help in doing that. No one ought to be accepted 
who does not feel that. You do not want people 
who are being confirmed because their wives want 
them to be, or because they think every one ought 
to belong to some Church. 



A KEY-NOTE FOR LENT. 

1WANT to strike a key-note for Lent. What 
shall that note be? Let it be some word of 
warning, some word which, short, piercing, singu- 
lar, will arrest the attention and remain in the 
memory. Let me choose the word. It is " luke- 
warm." Keep that before you as a warning and a 
danger while the solemn hours of Lent, one by one, 
join the Lents which are past and gone. 

You know what a nauseous thing a lukewarm 
drink is. We like cold drinks and hot drinks, but 
just a tepid liquid is sickening. You know what 
lukewarm people are, half and half, milk and 
water. If any cause, or any effort to do good, to 
effect any change, attracts to it only lukewarm 
people, we despair of it, we know that nothing 
will ever be accomplished. 

Now let us consider lukewarmness in reference 
to religion, in reference to ourselves, our parish, 
our Church, our fellow-men, our dear Master. 
This, remember, is the time to do it. We are 
on the threshold of Lent, and Lent is no time 
for sprinkling rose water, for administering sooth- 



78 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

ing syrups, for coddling and smoothing down. 
It is a time for shaking up, for spiritual house- 
cleaning, for opening doors and windows in the 
heart, for snatching the fillet from blinded eyes, 
for unstopping the dulled ears, for sending sharp 
arrows between the joints of the world's armor 
right into the soul. Do not say: "In the old 
Episcopal Church of our boyhood we did not have 
all this excitement. When Lent came, we had of 
course Wednesday and Friday prayers, just prayers 
with a little reading, and we made some difference 
in our food, but there was no commotion. We were 
not made to feel uncomfortable with every day 
prayers and constant addresses, and early Com- 
munions, and Three Hours on Good Friday, and 
everlasting begging for this or that thing, and 
rasping sermons on Sundays." Now if there is 
one thing for which you ought to be thankful, it is 
that the old-fashioned Episcopal Church has all 
been swept away, and that now not even her 
worst enemy can cry "lukewarm," as he beholds 
her glorious activity. 

But while the Church is not lukewarm, are 
not you? You, eminent member of the Church, 
always .in your place, ever ready to give \-our 
quarter, and do your part? Are you not luke- 
warm, man or woman actively engaged in some 
part of the Church work, talking much about 
it, and thinking much about it? Are \-ou not 
lukewarm, all you who press up to the altar, 
and wear the livery of the Saviour of the world ? 
And if you hear a whisper in your heart, "No, I 



A KEY-NOTE FOR LENT. 79 

am not," down on your knees, poor conceited soul, 
and pray God to open your e} T es upon yourself. 
Not lukewarm! Let us rehearse the standards 
and see for ourselves : 

"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all 
thy heart, and with all thy mind and with all thy 
soul, and with all thy strength." 

"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." 

" Thou shalt not let the sun go down upon thy 
wrath." 

"If thy right e3^e, or hand, or foot, cause thee 
to commit sin, cut it off and cast it from thee." 

" Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those 
who trespass against us." 

"He that loveth father or mother more than 
Me, is not worthy of Me." 

How do you appear when you set yourself over 
against words like these? And remember that 
these words were not addressed to some select 
coterie from which you can wriggle away, and 
say they do not apply to you ; they were spoken 
to the w r hole body of Christians, they belong to 
every age and everybody in every parish. Do 
you, for example, love the Lord with all your 
heart, and soul, and mind, and strength ? Do you 
love Him with half your heart, with a quarter of 
your soul, with a twentieth part of your mind, 
with a hundredth part of your strength ? Is not 
lukewarm really too good a word for you ? Ought 
not "ice cold" to be put in its place? But "luke- 
warm" is the right word, for it does imply some 
warmth. A lukewarm bath might be life, an ice 



80 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

cold one, death. You do love God in some degree. 
Generous impulses and high resolves do stir within 
you. You do try, in some faint, languid way, to 
follow in His train. I am not addressing cold and 
heartless formalists; they are not likely to read 
this book. What I mean is that there is an 
absence of that enthusiasm, that eagerness, that 
devotion to our spiritual state, and the spiritual 
state of the world, that glow, that fire, that rush 
which would transform the world, and change this 
slow, halting, unsteady progress of the Gospel of 
Christ into a magnificent victory ! 

Now, what do you do, when you find placed 
before you some lukewarm drink? Why, you 
send it out to the fire. Do that way with 
your spiritual life. What fire, do you ask? 
Why the fire of penitence, the fire of stern resolve, 
the fire of earnest aspirations. The blessed Food 
so often on our altars is a fire, the piercing 
words of Holy Scripture is a fire, prayer is a 
fire, the giving up of the will is a fire. Take 
your souls then and warm them up. And what 
do you say to the lukewarm people in your 
service? "My son if you want to stay with me, 
you will have to show a livelier interest, and step 
around quicker." So God says to us: "My son, if 
you continue in this languid way, doing a half- 
and-half duty, if you show no more interest, your 
lukewarmness will become coldness, and the cold- 
ness will become iciness, and you will lose your 
soul, not because I wish it, but because you will 
it." 



A KEY-NOTE FOR LENT. SI 

Oh, beloved, let us, this Lent, struggle with 
lukewarmness ; love Him a little more, open our 
hearts to the fire of the Sun of Righteousness. 
The ice will melt, the indifference will become 
enthusiasm ; warm ourselves, we will help to set 
the world on fire. 



WHAT IS FASTING FROM FOOD? 

LENT has begun— let us talk about it a little. 
The word is from the Anglo-Saxon, "lencten," 
meaning "spring," because Lent always comes in 
the spring, though it often begins in February. 
The time varies, for Ash Wednesday depends upon 
Easter, and is early or late, as that feast is early 
or late. 

There are two parts to Lent, as, indeed, there 
are to every act and every ceremony — the outward 
part and the inward part ; that which you do with 
the body, and that which you do with the spirit. 

Let us take up first the outward part. You will 
hear that the principal duty of Lent is fasting, and 
the general idea of fasting is that it means simply 
abstinence from food. It does mean that, but in 
the Church's idea it means a great deal more than 
that. Our branch of the Catholic Church differs 
from other branches in never having made precise 
and specified rules about the kind of food you 
should or should not eat in Lent ; and that was 
very wise, for it is impossible to make any rule 
that will suit evervbodv. You will read in the 



WHAT IS FASTING FROM FOOD ? 83 

papers just before Lent the rules set forth by the 
different Roman Catholic Bishops. They differ in 
different dioceses, but in every Roman Catholic 
parish the priest grants any number of dispensa- 
tions ; so that, after all, there is not much more 
uniformity than among us in regard to the Lent 
fasting. Some people think that if they substitute 
fish for flesh they are fulfilling the precept ; but that 
will not work. One of the most delicious and 
sumptuous dinners I ever was at in my life was 
given in Rome, in the middle of Lent, by a monsig- 
nore attached to the Pope's household. Many 
were the courses, abundant the wines, but there 
was not an atom of meat served. Certainly this 
could not be called fasting. In many parts of our 
country it would be much more expensive to serve 
fish at the meals than to serve meat, and to save 
expense for food is one great part of fasting. 

Now, just because your Church has not made 
any petty rules, you must be the more particular 
to make rules for yourself on this subject of Lenten 
food, and I put under that head, drinks and 
tobacco. In the first place, you ought to ask your- 
self in the presence of God : " Can I diminish the 
amount of my daily food ? " Many people cannot. 
It immediately affects their health, and very many 
never take at any time more food than is abso- 
lutely necessary for living. A parish priest whom 
I knew, limited his food so much that he fainted in 
church and was ill for a week, and the parish was 
deprived all that time of Lent services. How 
much better it would have been for him to be less 



84 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

abstemious. In another parish, people told me 
they were afraid in Lent to speak to the rector; 
his strict fasting made him so cross and so irri- 
table. Now, any fasting that produces such effects 
is positively sinful. But for those of us who are 
removed from that utter poverty which spreads 
Lent over the whole year, some lessening of our 
food will do us good, even physically. We Ameri- 
cans eat too much anyway, and any doctor will 
tell you that about half his cases are connected 
with the stomach and are the results of over-eat- 
ing. But letting alone any medical effects, our 
own individual experience tells us that we cannot 
pray, or think, or listen, or do any mental work, 
half as well under heavy eating as under light diet ; 
and Lent is a time for a great deal of thinking and 
praying. 

Then does obedience, simple obedience, count 
for nothing? Soldiers obey many rules because 
they are the orders; that is sufficient for them. 
Ought not the Church's orders to be sufficient for 
us? Where did she find fasting? Where but in 
her Master's life and example ? 

But whatever conclusion you arrive at (and, 
remember, it must not be a self-indulgent conclu- 
sion) about the quantity of your food, you cannot 
be in much perplexity about the power of changing 
the quality and expense of it. I do not mean that 
in imitation of the silly acts recorded about some 
Romish saints, you shall eat any nastv- mess, with 
the idea that it shows your sanctification. I mean 
that you shall, during Lent, choose plainer, sim- 



WHAT IS FASTING FROM FOOD ? 85 

pier, cheaper food, and take the money saved for 
holy purposes. It would be undignified to go into 
a discussion of various foods, but certainly we 
can instance drinks and tobacco. Unless medically 
ordered, they certainly can be given up; very 
expensive things they are, and very many men 
would feel their loss more than anything else. 
Perhaps one Lent's experience would show many 
how much better they were without them. 

I know how thorny all this subject is, how 
many exceptions come up, how experiences differ. 
I am not expecting to cover every man's case. I 
am just putting before you a few general principles 
which may help you to follow the Church's pre- 
cept of Lenten abstinence. 



FASTING FROM AMUSEMENTS. 

BUT fasting from food is only one branch of the 
tree of self-denial. Another great branch is 
fasting from amusements. I take it for granted 
that they who read this are the ordinary Christ- 
ians of the age and country, and I have generally 
found that they have the same amusements which 
all respectable and well-meaning people have. 
They go sometimes to the theater. Some of them 
play cards. They give dinner parties and dancing 
parties, and go to such. They read novels. They 
play ball and roll ten pins, and do not at all 
follow the twelfth centur} r recipe for holy living, 
which was to put on a hair shirt, abjure every 
comfort, and because a thing was pleasant, hold 
it in horror. 

We do not find that this way of action made 
any lovelier patterns of Christian life than now 
exist. If a Christian man wishes to see a good 
play, why should he not ? A good play can only 
have a good influence, and some of the noblest 
lessons of unselfishness, heroism, reward of virtue 
and punishment of vice, can be learned from the 



FASTING FROM AMUSEMENTS. 87 

stage. Alas, that there should be so few good 
plays given, and that conscientious Christian 
people are often obliged to keep away from the 
theatre, for fear of having their moral and religious 
sense outraged by words and scenes to which the 
whole town is nocking ! A play is now attracting 
crowds in one of our cities, which not only exhibits 
the most shameless immorality, but sacrilegiously 
shows a Bishop at the altar celebrating the 
Eucharist. How can anyone with any spirituality 
at all, or any standard of holiness, witness such a 
thing ? and this plaj^ does not stand alone. But 
the abuse of a thing is not the slightest argument 
against the use of it, for if it is, you, my friend, 
must give up your carriage because horses run 
races and betting is encouraged ; and you must 
give up coffee, for the abuse of coffee is ruining the 
health of thousands. I will waste no ink then on 
the question as to whether Christian people should 
or should not indulge in the usual amusements of 
their fellows. They do, as everyone can see, and I 
have no particular quarrel with them for doing so. 

But now there comes a time in the Christian 
year when the Church calls upon her children to 
keep away from their usual amusements, and she 
gives reasons for that : 

First, that people may see how deeply their 
lives are rooted in such things, and may discover 
that they are crowding out all higher, nobler 
views of life, just making it a place for selfish 
pleasure. This discovery may be awfully impor- 
tant. It may lead a soul to consider whether 



88 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

it is not putting evil for good and bitter for sweet ; 
whether to be amused is not becoming with them 
a much more important thing than to be helpful 
to others, and self-denying in order to be so; 
whether they are not becoming luxurious, self- 
indulgent, utterly worldly in the worst sense of 
the word. Calling a halt in the rush of amuse- 
ments will make a man open his eyes to their real 
value and the tremendous over-importance he has 
been giving them ; and while it would be foolish in 
him to say: " I never will do any of these things 
again," he will resolve with God's help not to be 
such a slave to them as he finds he has been. 

In the second place, a stopping of theater going, 
etc., gives a great deal more time for something 
more strengthening to the soul and more invigora- 
ting to the higher nature ; time for more constant 
worship, time for unselfish work, time for Church 
causes which often suffer from neglect. I have 
known many an important Church meeting almost 
go by default, because at the very hour it was 
going on, eight or ten of the principal families of 
the parish were at some public entertainment. 
Now in Lent, the giving up great entertainments, 
the sensible restrictions put upon mere amuse- 
ment, will leave much time for work far more 
important and far more necessary. 

In the third place, the giving up of a much 
loved amusement is a real cross to many excellent 
people. For example: This Lent will probably 
witness a very brilliant season of first-class opera, 
in which the best sinsrers in the world will be 



FASTING FROM AMUSEMENTS. 89 

heard. It will be, to many good people, a positive 
grief not to see this, a real cross, I repeat; but the 
taking up that cross and carrying it will be one of 
the most wholesome tonics for the soul that can be 
found. Every day will make it felt, and to the 
question : " Wiry should I not go," let the answer 
be given: "I do not go because I am trying to 
keep in my mind the sufferings of Christ, all that 
He gave up for me; and by renouncing a little 
myself, to measure in some degree all that He, all 
that the saints, all that the elect of the earth, 
have given up for their fellow-men." 

It is nothing to give up something about which 
we do not care. It is a great deal to turn away 
from something we enjoy. 



LENT READING. 

THERE are many people who would find it very 
beneficial to fast during Lent from novel 
reading. There is no more harm in reading novels 
than there is in eating roast beef; but an exclusive 
diet of either is apt to be over-stimulating and 
unhealthy. Novels are just as much a part of a 
man's education as histories or geographies, and 
no man can be said to be well informed who 
refuses to read any work of fiction. Some of the 
very best and truest thought of the day is put 
into novels, and the most perfect model of good 
style is to be found in Stevenson's novels. But 
while all that is true, the reading of novels to the 
exclusion of other reading, and above all, the 
reading all sorts of novels without any discrimina- 
tion as to their moral or their literary merits, 
tends verjr greatly to weaken the moral strength, 
to unbrace the mind, to prevent all serious thought, 
and to give the most unreal and exaggerated views 
of every day life. 

Now, it is an undoubted fact that the majority 
of readers are simply novel readers. The}- never 



LENT READING. 91 

look into any other sort of book, and the novels 
they read are generally weak and trashy. Then 
think of the many immoral novels now published, 
and which you find on the tables of the most 
respectable people. But assuming that the novels 
you read are all superior productions, do you not 
read too many of them ? Do you not really waste 
a great deal of time on them ? Do you not allow 
them to crowd out a great deal of other reading 
which is most important for the development of 
your mind, the extending of your information, the 
deepening of your character ? Suppose, then, you 
resolve to fast from novel reading during Lent, 
and to devote the reading time to something a 
little more substantial. Let history, travel, bio- 
graphy, now have some show. This is also the 
proper time for distinctive religious reading. How 
ignorant many of you are of the most funda- 
mental doctrines of Christianity ! A clear atheist 
could floor you in an argument in a moment. You 
are perfectly uncon vers ant with even the element- 
ary answers to the foes of our religion. How few 
of you can give reasons for those views and 
practices which distinguish }^our Church, and 
which are so misunderstood by those who worship 
in some other way. When you are asked the wlw 
and the wherefore, what can you say ? You have 
doubtless even forgotten the superficial knowledge 
of these things you received in preparation for 
Confirmation. 

Now, is not Lent an excellent opportunity to 
brush up your knowledge of the plan of salvation, 



92 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

and the consecrated system of the Church ? Try 
to use this Lent to make yourself a well-informed 
Churchman. Your rector will be glad to point out 
to you short, cheap, interesting books on the 
Catholic Faith and on Church history. 

But there is one old-fashioned book which calls 
for your especial study in Lent, and that is the 
Holy Bible, the Word of God, the guide to salva- 
tion. I do not refer simply to reading more of it 
than you usually do, but to studying it with some 
good Commentary or Bible help. You cannot 
understand a great deal of the Bible unless you do 
that, for the meaning involves questions of history 
and customs, and forms of speech which are now 
out of use, and just reading verses throws no light 
on such things. But if you will read your Bible 
with such a book, for example, as Geikie's " Hours 
with the Bible," a book very easily procured, and 
very cheap, you will find it transformed for you. 
Places before so dark will glow with light and 
meaning. The Bible is a perfect treasure house 
and no one can read it carefully without finding 
something new and profitable at every reading. 
Think of the incredible number of works on the 
Bible which have been written; and yet every year, 
in nearly every book, something new and interest- 
ing is published. Take up now the devotional 
stud}' of the Bible, which is something quite differ- 
ent from the intellectual. Go down on your knees 
and say devoutly the Collect for the second Sunday 
in Advent, and then turn to the part of the Bible 
you have determined thus to study; and having 



LENT READING. 93 

read a few verses, think over those very earnestly, 
try to apply them to your own spiritual condition, 
search out their secondary meanings, and fix them 
in your memory. Not all parts of the Bible are 
alike useful for this. The Psalms, Job, Proverbs, 
parts of the Prophets, the Gospels and Epistles, 
will be found the most profitable. Do not prolong 
this to weariness, and you will find it full of spirit- 
ual aid. 

Now, all the fasting of which I have spo- 
ken in these three talks is an outward act. 
Others can see it, and therefore you must take 
every pains to conceal it, so that you may not get 
credit for it with men. You must often use pious 
ingenuity to effect this, for all the good will be lost 
if your pride and vanity are aroused by the com- 
mendations of others on your self-denial and your 
observance of Lent. The words of Scripture are 
very pointed: " Anoint thy head and wash thy 
face (in those times, signs that a man was not 
fasting) so that thou appear not unto men to fast." 
Let God alone know that. 



CHURCH GOING. 

THERE are other " outward points" to Lent 
besides the different kinds of fasting. There 
is "church, going." I know very well this may be 
made, and often is made, a purely outward thing. 
People go to church from a variety of motives : 

Because it is respectable to do so, though I assure 
you, you can be highly respectable and respected 
in these days, and never darken a church door; 
there are any number of families of very high posi- 
tion^who attend no place of worship, the more 
shame to them. 

Because you think it an example you ought to 
set, churches and religion are excellent police 
agents; city life would not be feasible without 
them, and while you do not yourself believe in 
them, yet for the sake of others you must help 
keep them up, and have a pew and sit in it. 

Because your wife makes you go, she gives 
you no rest unless you go to church sometimes, 
and you have to do it to keep peace in the family. 

Because you cannot shake off the habit of your 
childhood and your father's way of life; you do 



CHURCH GOING. 95 

not feel comfortable unless you go more or less to 
church, although it means very little to you. 

Because the music is very superior, and the 
sermon a fine intellectual effort, and you meet 
people and see clothes. 

All these reasons influence more or less the 
church-going of many, but I will assume that 
you believe the public worship of your God and 
Saviour to be not only your duty but your 
delight. You love the house of God, and once on 
Sunday you are to be found there, weather and all 
other things being equal. Now, I grant that the 
Church has always considered the " obligations " 
of Sunday fulfilled by an attendance on the prin- 
cipal service of the Lord's Day, especially if it be a 
Holy Communion. I also know full well that very 
many good Christians must take some time on 
Sunday for a little rest and quiet pleasure, for they 
cannot command any other time. I hold no ultra- 
puritanic views about keeping Sunday. But now 
comes a time when a Christian man wants to do 
more than his mere " obligation," when he ought 
to be willing to abridge his Sunday pleasures 
somewhat for the sake of self-discipline. Resolve 
then during this season of Lent that you will be 
present in the sanctuary more frequently than at 
other times, and that you will persevere in over- 
coming the greatest difficulties that you may do 
so. The sacrifice of a pleasant evening with your 
family and friends, the going out, will brace you 
up, will do your soul good, to say nothing of the 
service in which 3-ou will engage, and the earnest 



96 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

words you may hear. Renounce for Lent your 
inestimable privilege of criticising what you hear. 
We know of course that you pay the preacher, and 
therefore have a right to pull him to pieces ; but if 
you will forego that pearl of great price during 
Lent you will have made spiritual progress. 

In Lent there are not only Sunday services, but 
weekday ones. In any parish of much size there 
are daily ones. Now I have tried all sorts of hours 
and all arrangements of services, and I have never 
hit on one which suited everybody. The rector 
generally selects the hour which will suit the 
greatest number. Men in this western country are 
not generally men of leisure. They cannot leave 
their offices and stores in business hours, especially 
if they are employes and engaged for certain hours. 
It would not be honest to do so. The only week 
services they can generally attend are evening 
services, and yet how few of them even do that. 
Probably out of three hundred male communi- 
cants in a large parish, about twenty or thirty 
will be found at any one evening service, and 
during the whole of Lent perhaps half of them will 
not have appeared more than once. Now can you 
not, individually, show a better example? Do you 
not need the prayers, the exhortations, the stirring 
up of the soul, which come with Lent and form 
the back bone of Lenten services? Even at the 
afternoon services many men, and certainly many 
more women, could be present by a little exertion. 
I have known much occupied business men very 
regular at a late afternoon service. Thej^ wanted 



CHURCH GOING. 97 

to come, and by a good deal of exertion and extra 
work they accomplished it and felt the blessed 
comfort of it. 

There is one Lent privilege which all of us 
ought to prize much more than we do, and that 
is the opportunity more frequently to receive the 
Holy Communion. If this be the greatest bless- 
ing ever vouchsafed the soul, and the chiefest 
means of grace, surely no chance of having it 
ought to be missed. When I was a boy one 
could not commune more than once a month, and 
in some parishes, not more than once in two 
months, for frequent Celebrations were unknown, 
and the pioneers in weekly Communions were 
called semi-papists, and all other pretty names. 
Now in almost all churches there is at least an 
early Communion on Sunday. Carefully prepared 
for, there is no act of worship which will be found 
more precious, fuller of spiritual comfort, more 
peaceful, more uplifting. Try it this Lent, and 
prove my words. 



LENT CHARITIES. 

LET us talk a little about Lenten charit\-, for 
charity is one of the great Lenten duties. 
Now charity is one of the most complicated and 
difficult questions of the day. What it means; 
how to do it ; when is it an evil, and when is it a 
good? Volumes are written on these subjects. 
The great reason for this is that asking for relief is 
a regular business like any other business, and 
people make their living by it, and often a yqty 
good living. Testimony was once taken in a great 
English cit^- from about a hundred beggars, and 
nine-tenths of them testified that they made a 
good living, and much enjoyed their easy life. You 
may take it for granted that at least six out of 
every ten applying at your door for relief, or 
accosting 3'ou on the street, are impostors. Indeed 
in most cases their breath is sufficient to condemn 
them. Giving under those circumstances is no 
charity. It is onW encouraging vice. So do not 
think that b\ r giving an extra number of dimes to 
beggars in Lent, you are practising Lent charity. 
Remember also that you can manufacture calls for 



LENT CHARITIES. 99 

charity. The very moment a church starts a 
society for making clothes for the poor, or giving 
out second-hand clothes, or supplying food, that 
very moment candidates will appear. The}' have 
never been heard of before, but now they stand out 
in clear light, and if you look closely you will often 
find that they are working two or three parishes, 
and have clothes to sell or pawn. Then, too, we 
have to look out for the well-dressed knave, who 
in the politest manner, his white handkerchief to 
his eyes, tells you he has just lost his trunk, or his 
purse, or his situation, and needs only the loan of 
a few dollars, as a remittance from home will 
arrive in a day or two. One very suave young 
gentlemen, whom some choirmasters will remem- 
ber, was so unfortunate as to lose his mother four 
times. I contributed $10 toward the last funeral 
of that much-buried lady. Every chance case of 
charity ought to be investigated, and unless a 
parish has an investigating committee, its charity 
will be generally misplaced and breed more harm 
than good. 

But surely every one must know worthy people 
who from one cause or another need a little help ; 
women with large families and worthless hus- 
bands ; men who by some misfortune be\ T ond their 
control have got behind in the race of life ; women 
left destitute and struggling to get a little start so 
that they may support themselves. There are 
plenty of such cases, mam^ of them most pitiful. 

If you do not know any, and you must live a 
very selfish life if you do not, your rector, or some 



100 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

of your charitable friends will know, and you should 
make it a very marked part of your Lent keeping 
to help such cases ; and when I say help, I do not 
mean merely sending a few dollars to the rector to 
be used as he finds best, but the making the 
acquaintance of such people, and personally enter- 
ing into their sad lives. This will do you more 
good and open your heart more than a purse of 
dollars sent to some one else to dispense. Do not 
omit that, but if you possibly can, add the other 
also. This thing must not be done in any patron- 
izing way. When people are down they are very 
sensitive. It must be done with delicacy, with 
gentleness, with the utmost courtesy. You must 
not be the condescending patron putting yourself 
out to see the poor, but a pitying man meeting his 
fellow-man, a sympathetic woman in the presence 
of her sister woman. A person in reduced circum- 
stances whom I knew received every New Year's 
day two barrels of flour from two most excellent 
people. One barrel just came addressed, nothing 
more. With the other always came a few kind, 
sweet words, full of good wishes and loving hopes. 
Out of which barrel, think you the bread tasted 
the sweetest ? There is not a person in need, unless 
very degraded, who would not rather have ten 
cents given with delicacy and at some personal 
trouble, than a dollar shoved at him. 

There is one class of needy people in whom I 
have always taken the greatest interest; young men 
and women trying to get an education in some 
one of the many schools, on a ver\ r small income, 



LENT CHARITIES. 101 

barely enough to support existence. Now it may 
be true that such a life toughens the moral fibre, 
and is a good training ; but it will do no harm to 
soften it a little by the generous help of some sym- 
pathizing friend, whose kindly words and occa- 
sional dollars will take off the keen edge of that 
life which separates mere existence from mere com- 
fort. I recommend you earnestly to seek out some 
such case this Lent. 

This Lent charity includes a large and very 
different outgiving. The various Church causes 
ought now to receive that help which your saving 
in unnecessary expense will enable you to give; 
Missions, Aged and Infirm Clerg}^ Church building, 
Church education, etc. Always have in mind, and 
prepare for the Easter collection in your parish. It 
is astonishing how much by a little self-denial even 
the poorest person can give on that day when 
gratitude and joy should swell our hearts to over- 
flowing. 



HOLY WEEK. 

THIS is Holy Week. How ought a good Church- 
man to spend it ? How ought he to conduct 
himself towards the world and in private? How 
can he draw the closest to his suffering Master? In 
the first place, it seems to me that any right- 
minded Churchman should this week abstain 
entirely from society and public amusement. No 
matter how alluring it may be or how innocent, 
during these days, when we are to have in mind 
the slow and bleeding steps of Jesus our Lord up 
the Cross on Calvary, it should be put on one side. 
Women are ver} r apt to spend much of this week in 
giving attention to clothes, attending " openings " 
and discussing fashions. It is entirely out of keep- 
ing with the events of this week, and must unfit the 
mind for any edifying participation in the multi- 
plied services. 

When I was a bo}^ the warden of our village 
church always shut up his store on Good Friday. 
He was 1113- Sunday-school teacher, and I asked 
him win- he did it. He replied: "How can I be 
trading on the day when my Lord had to undergo 



HOLY WEEK. 103 

such bitter trials for me?" This made a great 
impression on me, and I have always since then 
been unable to understand how Churchmen who 
would not for any consideration open their stores 
on Sunday, can do so on Good Friday. Both days 
are kept in obedience to a precept of the Church 
(for any particular keeping of Sunday is not prov- 
able from Scripture), and certainly Good Friday 
exceeds in strictness of observance any Sunday. 
Much recreation might be allowed on that day 
which would be entirely out of place on Good Fri- 
day. I think families ought to be as careful not 
to make purchases or to transact business on Good 
Friday as they would on Sunday, and if possible (I 
recognize that in large business establishments it 
might not always be possible) shops and stores 
should not be opened. In Europe everywhere 
theatres are closed on Good Friday, and in many 
places all of Holy Week ; we, alas ! cannot even 
keep them closed on Sundays. It is gratifying, 
however, to note that the public sentiment in 
regard to Good Friday is year by year growing 
more churchly. In many cities Boards of Trade 
adjourn on that day and the public schools are 
not opened. But on the other hand, in England, 
although the churches are crowded, so also are 
the railway trains carrying thousands of merry- 
makers into the country for a day's pleasure. 
Beyond the church doors it is a day of great fes- 
tivity, being one of the few legal holidays. 

It was my great privilege to spend one Holy 
Week in Jerusalem ; to go to Gethsemane on 



104 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

Maundy Thursday, and pray on the very spot 
where my Saviour prayed that the cup might pass 
from Him ; to walk on Good Friday along the very 
path He trod ; and going up to Calvary, to kneel 
where the Christians of all the world have knelt 
for many centuries, and bow my head over the 
place where His cross was set up; and then on 
Easter to see the splendid processions, with lights 
and banners and joyful song, encircling the tomb 
from which He arose on the first great Easter. It 
was an experience never to be forgotten. 

Good Friday is a day to be spent as far as is 
possible in church and in retirement. Of late years 
we have had the inestimable privilege of what is 
called the " Three Hours," a service held from noon 
until three o'clock, in memory of the time that our 
Lord hung upon the fearful Cross. Of course there 
was the usual outcry at first that it was popish and 
led surely and swiftly toRome; but its simplicity and 
its evident fitness recommended it so heartily that 
all opposition soon ceased, and now this touching 
service is held in churches of all grades of Church- 
manship. The ritual is of the simplest. The con- 
ductor, in his cassock, stands or sits at the head of 
the chancel steps. There are a few prayers, some- 
times from the Prayer Book, sometimes from some 
authorized manual, sometimes extempore. There 
is the singing of a few well-known hymns, and then 
stirring, earnest addresses on the events of the day. 
Any one who has ever attended a well-conducted 
Three Hours' service on Good Friday will say that 
nothing in which he ever joined brought him nearer 



HOLY WEEK. 105 

to the Cross and the thorn-crowned Saviour. 
Some may find three hours too long a time to be in 
church, but it is not obligatory to remain the 
whole time. During the singing of the hymns the 
going out and coming in can quietly be done. 

However hurried your private devotions may 
be on other days, they should not be so on Good 
Friday. You should often be on your knees, confess- 
ing your sins, acknowledging the awful difference 
between your professions and your practice, 
promising amendment and begging for grace and 
help from on high. Then you should also in Holy 
Week give much time to meditation, which is the 
hardest religious exercise with which I am 
acquainted, for the thoughts are so apt to wander. 
Think over your Lord's agonies, caused by sin, 
your sins also entering in. Think of the love that 
prompted all this, how impossible to repay. 
Resolve to do what you can to return some portion 
cf that love, by helping your fellow-men. 

Let the word " quiet" be the key-note of Good 
Friday — quiet speech, quiet action, the quiet that 
comes with death and burial. So doing, so living, 
3 r ou will come fittingly to a joyful Easter. 



SOME THOUGHTS FOR EASTER EVEN. 

WHEN one we love lies dead before us, we say 
to ourselves : "If we only knew where his 
spirit is ! Where has it gone ? What will it do ? " 
Now the histories of all nations abound in accounts 
of wizards, and witches, and sorcerers, who pre- 
tended to be able to open the gates of the other 
world, and show you exactly how it looked, and 
with much hocus pocus to call back the departed. 
We have, among us, a very extensive system, which 
for cash in hand, will bring back your departed 
friends, have them write messages on slates, put 
clammy hands on your forehead, and sometimes 
appear before you, like Hamlet's father, "in their 
habit as they lived." But we laugh at this sort of 
thing, and we ask ourselves : What does the Word 
of God say about the other world, and what com- 
fort can we find in it ? Now there is a great deal 
more about it in the Bible than people think, but 
let us confine ourselves now to one portion of the 
subject, not heaven nor hell, but what the Church 
calls the " Intermediate State." We will not 
trouble ourselves about what the " Fathers " say, 



SOME THOUGHTS FOR EASTER EVEN. 107 

for we can speculate quite as lively as they did, but 
we will see what the Bible teaches. 

The belief of the Catholic Church from the begin- 
ning has been that no one went to heaven or hell at 
his death, but to a state between earth and those 
places, where many changes might take place. 
This doctrine was repudiated by the great body of 
the Continental reformers ; but there has been a 
great change within the last few years, and now 
some of the foremost Protestant teachers insist on 
recasting their whole theology, and coming back to 
more Catholic and more comforting views of the 
future. The question is, however, not what 
theologies teach, but are we Churchmen warranted 
by Holy Scripture in saying in our Creed: "He 
descended into the place of departed spirits?" 
Now our Lord said in exact words after His res- 
urrection : "I am not yet ascended to My Father. ' ' 
Where had He been then ? He tells us in just as 
plain words, for He said to the thief when dying: 
4 k To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise." 
Now every Jew knew perfectly well what was 
meant by Paradise, for it was clearly defined in the 
theology of the rabbis, and meant the place where 
the souls of the righteous were, which they under- 
stood to be a beautiful garden. But the Bible tells 
more about this place. St. Peter tells us that Christ 
after death "went and preached to the spirits in 
safe keeping, which sometime were disobedient 
when once the long suffering of God waited in the 
days of Noah." Now if you put that in modern 
English it means this: "That while our Lord's 



108 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

body lay dead, His spirit, quick and alive, sped 
forth to the place where the souls of men are in safe 
keeping, and preached there to the departed." I 
am unable to tell why St. Peter mentions only one 
class of these spirits, those before the deluge. What 
could our Lord have preached there but the good 
tidings ? No one in his senses can suppose He went 
there to preach damnation. So then, the Bible 
teaches that the penitent thief, and by inference, all 
other men, go to a place of security after death ; 
that to one part of that place, called Paradise, our 
Lord went after His death and preached, and that 
it was not until after He had been in that place that 
He ascended to heaven ; and therefore, by inference 
it will not be until after our sojourn there, that we 
shall be received into glory; for remember, our 
Lord in His earthly life acted as a representative 
man— as He rose from the dead, so shall we ; as He 
went into Paradise, so shall we. 

But why are not greater details given about the 
whereabouts and the appearance of Paradise, in 
the Bible ? Simply because in our present state we 
should not be able to understand them, for we have 
not the capacity. If I were to read to a group of 
boors Robert Browning's poems, they would think 
I was talking gibberish, the words and thoughts 
would be be3 r ond their mental scope ; so how can 
we understand circumstances and conditions which 
belong to a state outside the earth and concern 
spiritual existences only ? Those who speak of this 
state have to use such words as golden, diamond, 
glass, etc., but I have not the least idea whether 



SOME THOUGHTS FOR EASTER EVEN. 109 

such words apply in another world. Goodness and 
truth are always goodness and truth, no matter 
whether they are attributed to God, or to men, or 
to angels; but color and splendor and beauty of 
landscape are matters of taste, and depend onhow 
you look at things ; and we can only look now with 
mortal eyes and see only things cognizable by mor- 
tals. 

A literal description of Paradise would con- 
vey to us very wrong impressions. St. Paul says 
that in an ecstacy he was caught up to Paradise, 
and heard unspeakable words which it is not pos- 
sible for a man to utter. If he could have uttered 
them, he would, for our edification. Lazarus was 
four days in Paradise, but when he came back he 
told nothing about it. Be} r ond a doubt his friends 
urged him to describe what he saw and reveal 
what he heard, but he could not put it into mortal 
words. There is no harm in your dreaming about 
it and speculating about it. It is a great delight 
to do so, but all you know about it is that it is a 
place of unspeakable joy; that it is where Christ 
has been; that it is the antechamber of heaven. 
Surely that is a great deal to know. We also know 
that this Intermediate State is not all one place. 
You will remember that Dives was in one part of 
it, and Lazarus in another, and that Judas went 
to "his own place." Analogy would tell us this, 
even if the Bible did not. There must be as many 
mansions in "Sheol" (which is the comprehensive 
Bible term for this place) as on earth or in heaven, 
only let us not forget that it is only a temporary 



110 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

abiding place; that the time is to come when we 
leave it for heaven or hell. 

The Roman Church teaches that the Blessed 
Virgin has been " assumed " into heaven and is not 
in the state where other mortals are, and that you 
can be got out of this state by Masses, but all 
that is pure speculation. There is not a hint of it 
in Scripture. 

I hope, and it is a hope the greatest lights of the 
Church have also held, that very many may grow 
better in the Intermediate State, and, seeking 
God's face, come nearer to Him. 



THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 

LET us continue to talk about the Intermediate 
State, for there are most interesting points 
which we have not touched, such as the conscious- 
ness of the departed spirits, their occupation, their 
recognition of each other, their connection with us, 
the possibility of probation for many of them, the 
good of prayer in their behalf. We cannot discuss 
all these themes, but let us think first of the ques- 
tion : " Are the spirits conscious, or do they all lie 
dormant until the resurrection?" Many Chris- 
tians have held the latter belief, and they found it 
in such expressions in Scripture as " Many of them 
that sleep in the dust of the earth shall arise," 
"He fell asleep," "He was the first fruits of them 
that slept." 

But do the Scriptures mean any more than 
what we mean when we use such words ? I put 
on a tombstone the words, "Asleep in Jesus," 
but I do not mean to imply in the slightest that 
the tenant of that tomb is lying somewhere in dull 
torpor. I mean that he sleeps to the sorrow and 
trials of this world. I mean simply, bodily rest. 



112 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

I think of his spirit as active, employed, palpitant 
with life and energy and purpose. You are not 
any more dull and dead when you are asleep than 
when awake, as far as your spirit is concerned. 
Your body may lie quiet as if you were dead ; but 
your soul may be far away climbing an Alpine 
peak, walking in an Italian valley, sailing a summer 
sea, battling with fierce foes, never more occupied, 
never more alive. So in the grave reposes the 
sleeping body, but the body's tenant has sped to 
the other world ; and there is full of occupation, 
full of pulsating life, a thousand times more real 
and exalted because the shackles of the body have 
been broken. 

Take Christ's own special parable about the 
Intermediate State. Dives and Lazarus are both 
fully conscious, both know where they are, and 
one has already grown less selfish, for he thinks 
of his brothers yet on earth and wants to warn 
them from his fate. Our Lord certainly did not 
go and preach to a dead world. St. Paul did 
not hear voices in a world where all were asleep. 
It could not be better to depart and go there, as 
St. Paul wishes he could. Think of those words, 
"Now I know in part, then shall I know even as 
also I am known," and you will begin to realize 
what a splendid world of knowledge opens before 
the enfranchised spirit. 

Do the spirits recognize each other ? All nations 
have thought so. In Homer, Ulysses greets with 
delight the form of his mother in Hades, and 
Achilles and Patrocles are friends after death. 



THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 113 

Cicero, in that charming book on old age, rejoices 
in the prospect of meeting and recognizing in 
Hades those whom he had known before. But 
never mind these. What does the Bible say about 
it ? When David was plunged in grief over his 
dead child, he said, "I shall go to him, but he shall 
not return to me." He certainly thought then 
that they would know each other in the next 
world. Does not our Lord plainly teach recogni- 
tion when he tells the thief that they shall be 
together in Paradise ? How could they be together 
without mutual recognition? What does our 
Lord mean when He tells us to make friends of our 
wealth, so that when we die those friends may 
receive us into everlasting habitations ? Does He 
not mean that those whom we have helped will 
know us, and be the first to welcome us to the 
other world ? But I will be asked, how about 
those who have been married twice? Will they 
recognize two wives in the other world? Our 
Lord meets that by His words about that bond : 
" They neither marry, nor are given in marriage ; " 
and the following words, which I take from 
Luckock, are much to the point : " Marriage was 
an ordinance to provide for the continuance of the 
human race. It ends with earth, but in so far as 
a spiritual bond exists between married persons it 
will continue." There is no eternal principle inher- 
ent in marriage. Love, friendship, congeniality, 
these can endure, but all that is of earth and 
physical perishes with earth. 



114 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

But will not sorrow be felt there for the absence 
of some whom we had dearly loved on earth, but 
whose lives unfitted them for Paradise ? Yes, I am 
sure it will, for even our own dear Lord sorrows 
in heaven over our sins ; but the clear vision we 
will have of God's perfect justice will soften the 
sharpest stroke and fully satisfy us. Can changes 
take place in the Intermediate State ? The Catho- 
lic Church has always held that one great reason 
for the existence of such a state is for the purifying 
of souls. Is it not true of the great majority 
of souls that they are very imperfect ? They do 
not deserve hell, and yet they are very far from 
being fit for heaven. Take the most righteous 
person, does not he, and do we not all, need much 
cleansing? Do not we need to have the bandage 
of prejudice taken from our eyes, so that we can 
see clearly the right and the truth before we pass 
on to the higher glory ? 

Do not confound what I say with the Roman 
Catholic doctrine of purgatory. That implies a 
flame of fire in which you will suffer physical pain ; 
and it is taught that those on earth can shorten 
the years of that pain by prayer and Masses ; 
that the Pope has power to let you out of that 
place. This is distinctly condemned in an Article 
of our Church, and is an entirely different thing 
from the gradual progress in holiness and in purity 
of souls that rest in Paradise. 

Then there is the interesting question of longer 
probation of certain classes ; for example, the 
untold millions of heathen who never heard of 



THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 115 

Christ. Can they be punished for not doing what 
they could not possibly do, and be sent to hell? 
To hold that is to hold Calvinism, not the Catho- 
lic creed. But that does not apply to us. We 
have had a sufficient probation. From our child- 
hood we have known our full duty. If we sin, we 
sin wilfully, and must take the consequences. I do 
not know clearly what an adequate probation is, 
but I do know that now is the time for us to seek 
our God. 



EASTER THOUGHTS. 

I NEVER feel myself so thoroughly a Churchman 
as at Easter, and I have always attributed it 
to the moon. Bo not smile. What is this April 
moon to a Baptist or a Presbyterian ? Why, noth- 
ing more than any other moon; but when a 
Churchman raises his eyes to the full moon after 
the vernal equinox, riding gloriously in the sky, 
he remembers that it is the same moon that looked 
down on Jerusalem and Gethsemane, and lit up the 
garden where our Lord knelt in agony ; the same 
moon that faded from the sky as the Easter sun, 
pale figure of the rising of the Sun of Righteous- 
ness, flooded with its light the tomb in the garden. 
And from that day to this, whenever the changing 
year sees again that moon in its fulness, the whole 
Catholic Church joins to celebrate the Resurrection 
of the Lord. The date of Christmas is a regulation 
of the Church ; for in spite of all the learning spent 
upon that subject, that point cannot be definitely 
settled ; but the moon of Easter is a natural sign 
which nothing can gainsay. There is then no 
other Sunday in the year like Easter Sunday, none 



EASTER THOUGHTS. 117 

so dear to the Christian, none so full of beloved 
memories to the Churchman. Some people think 
Christmas the first of the Catholic festivals ; but as 
the Apostle says : "If Christ be not risen, then is 
our preaching vain." So if Christ had been born 
and then had perished on the Cross, and the seal 
on the tomb had remained unbroken, those who 
deny His miraculous Birth, and that He was very 
God as well as very Man, would have had some 
color for their assertions. 

And now that Easter has come, are you going 
to join in that too common cry : " Hurrah, bo}'S ! 
the fast is over, the dull Lenten duties are past. 
Let us eat, drink, and be merry." It is true that 
the fast is over, that the constant Church-going, 
the withdrawal from society, the penitential tone 
of the Church services, give place now to other 
duties and other thoughts. It is not good for any 
man to overstrain his attention on any one point, 
and an unending Lent would be as fatal to the 
evolution of the well-rounded Christian as an 
unending Christmas. 

But do not forget that the joy of Easter must 
be a sober, a tempered joy. We are not to for- 
get the hill Calvary because the brilliancy and 
the perfume of the flowers in the garden of 
Joseph are around us. One of the first things we 
ought to do in Easter week is seriously to "take 
account of stock," if I may apply that business 
term to things of the soul. If we have kept any 
kind of Lent, we ought now, before its memories 
have grown dim, to ask ourselves : What 



118 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

good has come of it? How have I improved? 
What change has there been in me, in any way ? 
Lent answers to the modern religious word, 
" revival;" has my love been revived? Am I 
nearer to God and to my fellow-men because they 
are my brothers under God? Is my temper any 
sweeter? Do I nag less at home? (Dwell on that 
point, for it is a great test as to the usefulness of 
the past Lent). Do I bear with more patience the 
daily annoyances and difficulties of my business 
and my home? Could the clerks and servants if 
the}^ were put on a witness stand, testify clearly 
that I was less overbearing and fault-finding and 
unreasonable ? Can my children truly say : "We 
never knew our father or our mother to be so dear, 
so kind, so patient with our faults ? " Do I realize 
as never before the wonderful power and beauty of 
the Church, and what an instrument for doing 
good she is on earth, the true Body of Christ ; and 
do I mean to be in the future a more devoted son 
to her and therefore to my Master and my Father ? 
Have I got the better, even in a little way, of my 
darling sin, whether it be of the flesh, like drink or 
lust, or of the spirit, like meanness, and envy, and 
pride? 

There are a thousand such questions which 
every one ought in these first days of the great 
feast seriously to ask himself. I have gone through 
Lents, and found myself at Easter as cold and in- 
different as I was on Ash Wednesday ; and I have 
come out of others all in a glow with fervor and 
good purpose and fond hope. If we do not feel 



EASTER THOUGHTS. 119 

much better for Lent we are apt to soothe our con- 
sciences by crying : " It is due to the preacher ; he 
just said words, he did not rouse the conscience; 
or it is the fault of the services ; they were dull and 
poorly attended, and the singing was anything but 
edifying ; or the weather was to blame, I could not 
go very often." Now I do not deny that these 
things have a great influence over anybody's Lent. 
Our environment affects us immensely, but the real 
thing to be blamed is, you, yourself. You w^ere 
half-hearted and fickle and superficial in your Lent; 
and that is the cause why it has produced so small 
a harvest. " It is my fault," is what you ought to 
say. 

If you did keep a profitable Lent, I know 
that you had a good Easter. No matter how 
small your parish maybe, how poor the music, how 
commonplace the preacher, there must have been 
music and gladness and eloquence in your heart, 
as you felt the presence of your risen Lord pervad- 
ing you, and your religious life lifted up and 
lighted up by the season which has just closed. 



ROLLING AWAY THE STONE. 

THERE is great danger in trying to prove 
doctrines from isolated texts. But while 
that is true, do not forget that texts often form 
the most beautiful illustration of truths. An 
illustration, remember, is never synonymous with 
a proposition; and texts are often so full of life 
that their suggestiveness is more and deeper than 
we could formulate in set theological terms. 

I was struck with this on Easter Day, when we 
have the lesson in which occurs the incident of the 
angel rolling away the stone from the tomb of 
Christ. Let us see how that can be used to illustrate 
very practical and impor tant points . Do not plenty 
of people now roll up great stones against the 
door of Christ's tomb and shut Him out of sight, 
so that no matter how bright the Easter sun, no 
Saviour comes forth into the morning and the 
garden? All over this land there are cultured, 
refined, pure-lived men and women who, when you 
talk about this open tomb, with the stone rolled 
away, shake their heads and say : "No man can 
come again alive out of a tomb in which he was 



ROLLING AWAY THE STONE. 121 

shut; organic matter dissolves, and cannot be 
reunited in the same human form. There is noth- 
ing but corrupting brain matter. There is no 
spirit. Your individuality perishes at your death. 
Nothing of man but his works survives." Now- 
even Martineau, who begins on the outer edge of 
Christianity, refutes that notion pretty fully in 
some words like these : " It is impossible to form 
a steady conception of thought except as originat- 
ing behind the innermost bodily structures and 
intrinsically different from them. However much 
you refine and attenuate the living organism, yet 
after all thought is something quite unlike the 
whitest and the thinnest tissue; and the most 
delicate of fibres, woven if you please in fairy 
loom, can never be spun into emotions. If any 
one affirms that the juxtaposition of a number of 
particles makes a hope, and that an aggregate of 
curious textures forms venerations, he affirms a 
proposition to which I can attach no idea. Neither 
consumption can waste, nor fracture mutilate, nor 
gunpowder scatter away, thought, fidelity, and 
love, but only that organization which the spirit 
sequestered therein renders so fair and noble." 

But unbelief is not the only thing that rolls up 
stones against the Resurrection of Christ. There 
is unrepented sin. I know very well that because 
a man is a sinner it does not follow that he is an 
infidel. A man said to me only the other day : "I 
live a thoroughly impure life, but I have never for 
a moment doubted the Gospel of Christ, nor the 
punishment which is sure to come to me if I die in 



122 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

my sins." But when the life is darkened by sin 
there is a stone rolled up to the tomb of Christ ; 
and you cannot realize Easter if you look through 
eyes shotten with some indulgent appetite, clouded 
D3 7 envy, or hatred, or pride, if your feet be clogged 
by a heavy weight of indifference, or your back 
bent down by the load of earthliness you have 
put upon it. Faithlessness and despondency also 
roll up a heavy stone to the tomb, so that we 
see nothing but the blooming roses and the trees 
of the garden, but no Christ in the midst. 

Some one is taken from you, some one who was 
the very light of your eyes and the breath of your 
life; a child whose rosy lips pressed yours in holiest 
love; a wife whose devotion had sweetened the cup 
of life until it was very nectar; a husband on 
whom you leaned as a staff. Death snatched 
them from your clinging arms, and you have gone 
sobbing after their poor dust, and have rolled a 
great stone over them and gone back desolate. 
And now when you visit that cemetery, or when 
alone and at home you call up the picture of it, is 
the stone still rolled to the door? Have you no 
hope, no faith? Are you like John Stuart Mill, 
who lingered day after day over the grave of the 
wife he loved so well, shedding so many tears upon 
that white stone, and not one hope in his breast 
that it ever could be rolled away, not an atom of 
faith that the grave could ever give up its dead, or 
the parted be reunited ? He was an atheist. He 
scoffed at all this history- of the Resurrection. 
Christ for him was simply a good young Jew, a 



ROLLING AWAY THE STONE. 123 

figure about whom fancy and credulity, and self- 
interest had thrown a glamor, and whose Church 
was just an obstruction in the road of human 
progress. Are you so hopeless in spirit, although 
you may outwardly go through the forms of 
religion? Why, my friend, can it be possible that 
all the heroic lives built up in unselfishness, and 
defying all the seductions of falsehood, are gone 
forever? Can it be true that all the thought and 
hope and moral greatness and pure affection, are 
smothered forever under that lifeless stone? If 
that be so, plant no more flowers over graves, and 
carve no words of hope and tenderness on tombs ; 
for all that will mark only a vast mistake, and is 
only the outcome of an awful delusion. 

But that is not so. The stone has been rolled 
away. Out of a tomb sealed up like yours — it is a 
fact as well attested as any other — a Man came 
forth on Easter morning, and therefore all other 
men will come out of tombs. The Christian 
religion rests on this. Tombs cannot hold you. 
Stones caunot press down your spirit. You must 
live, and live forever. 



THE SNEER AT THE SUPERNATURAL. 

PEOPLE who are so smart tliat they cannot 
believe in the supernatural, are all the time 
trying to find some way of accounting for the uni- 
versal belief in it ; for you find it everywhere, and 
among nations in every stage of advancement. 
There may be a few little tribes where it does not 
seem to exist ; but when you look close into them, 
you will find, as Prof. Huxley says, that u while 
there may be savages without God in any proper 
sense of the word, there are none without ghosts, " 
and a ghost is only one form of the supernatural. 
These enemies to the supernatural will tell you, 
when asked to what they attribute this universal 
belief in some kind of a supervising deity, that ages 
ago a certain tribe had a very distinguished chief, 
whose memory they greatly reverenced when he 
died; and gradually they grew to think that he 
influenced their fortunes, and brought them good 
luck in hunting, etc.; so they took to worshipping 
him and invoking him — thus he became their god. 
They conquered other nations, and forced them 
also to worship him, and so the cult spread, and 
all the world was infected with it. 



THE SNEER AT THE SUPERNATURAL. 125 

Or they will reel off another fairy story to you, 
and tell you that many years ago men were terrified 
by earthquakes and floods and so on, and out of 
fear they began to pray to the earthquakes, and so 
on, not to harm them, and in that w^ay a crowd of 
gods came to the front. Or they will tell you that 
primitive men thought they saw ghosts, especially 
when they went to bed in the dark, and they began 
trying to propitiate the ghosts and offer them fruit 
and animals, so that they would not harm them, 
and so, by degrees, the ghosts became their gods. 

But all these makeshifts cut a pretty poor figure 
when youstud}^ the career of man, and see what an 
enormous influence this idea of the supernatural, 
or of God, which is the same thing, has had in the 
evolution of humanity ; how it has always been the 
great motor-power ; how the questions connected 
with it have been those around which all humanity 
has revolved. Something so persistent, so uni- 
versal, calls for some nobler source than an 
honored ancestor, or an unsubstantial ghost, or 
the fear of thunder. It is much more logical to 
hold that all men believed there was a God, simply 
because there was one ; just as you and I think now 
when we see a house, that some one built it. But 
these very acute people cry : No matter how the 
idea of the supernatural got into the world, it was 
a childish idea, meant for the infancy of the race ; 
and it has been blown to atoms by the explosives 
of our day. Knowledge of all kinds has not left it 
a leg to stand upon. 



126 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

Now, that kind of talk has been going on ever 
since the time of Christ ; and during the last cen- 
tury, when knowledge has been most extended, 
has been heard on every tongue, and has been even 
adopted by some governments; but somehow or 
other, this troublesome supernaturalism, like the 
spot on Lady Macbeth's hand, will not " out." It 
still influences all the habits and customs and laws 
and ethics of civilized and uncivilized nations. All 
the ideas of liberty and government and mutual 
relations of men are bound up with it ; and even 
the gentlemen who scoff at it, and the workmen, 
who so often utterly neglect it, cannot possibly 
escape from its influences, its prescriptions, its ten- 
dencies. I do not apply this to the Christian belief 
in the supernatural alone, but to the Turkish, to 
all the great pagan creeds. I have been travelling 
lately quite extensively in Moslem countries, and 
the belief in the supernatural is about the liveliest 
thing you find; and Hindoos give every year a 
good deal more money to show their firm belief in it 
than even Christians do. 

Take our own country. A set of very broad- 
mouthed speakers is constantly declaring that 
Christianity has had its day ; that it is just a hol- 
low sham, and really influences no sensible person. 
You read this in much of the modern poetry. It 
forms the stock argument of the men and women 
in the nasty novels now so popular, who never 
can love their own husbands and wives, but must 
always be running after their neighbor's husbands 
and wives. It is loudly applauded at workmen's 



THE SNEER AT THE SUPERNATURAL. 127 

meetings. Mr. Robert Ingersoll makes a great deal 
of money by spouting it before large gatherings, 
which break into tumultuous approval ; but it is 
just " great cry and little wool." There never was 
more money spent for the supernatural than now. 
It never had more brilliant defenders. It never 
exerted more influence. It never gathered larger 
crowds of workers. Just because some ways in 
which it was formerly held are found to be foolish 
ways, no more affects the vitality of it than dis- 
covering a better way of preserving apples affects 
the realit} r of the apple. The supernatural still 
moulds the world, and Mr. Herbert Spencer, who 
hates it as the devil hates holy water, has to wring 
his hands and say: "The supernatural element 
survives in great strength down to our own day. 
Religious creeds, established and dissenting, all 
embody the belief that right and wrong are simply 
right and wrong in virtue of divine enactment.' ' 
Yes, Mr. Spencer, that is so. It is an undying 
instinct in man. Neither you nor an}^ other mortal 
can squelch it. 



TWO EASTERS IN ONE YEAR. 

THIS paper is an account of how I kept two 
Easters in one year. Do not say this is as 
impossible as two Popes at one time. There have 
been three Popes at one time, and I have actually 
kept two Easters in one year, and came very near 
keeping two Christmases. Let me tell you how it 
was done. 

The regular orthodox Episcopal Easter, I kept 
on the regular orthodox day, the first Sunday after 
the first full moon after the vernal equinox, in the 
holy city of Jerusalem. It was a warm, bright, 
sunshiny day, the 25th of March, 1894; and early 
in the morning I came down from the hotel outside 
the walls, passed through the Jaffa gate, and along 
by the tower of David to the English church, which 
stands with its schools and offices quite conspic- 
uously opposite the great tower, where Turkish 
soldiers are always lounging, and where a Turkish 
band discourses most unearthly music. It is a 
modern Gothic church, just like a thousand country 
churches in our own land, nothing remarkable in 
its architecture, and nothing very much out of 



TWO EASTERS IN ONE YEAR. 129 

taste. Forty or fifty Americans and English were 
gathered for the early Communion. The service 
was conducted on the lowest Church lines conceiv- 
able, dull, cold, bare, not even one little flower on 
the altar, and the ministers in funeral stoles ; but 
the words of the Office were the same dear words 
in which I had joined all my life, and the place and 
the hour well served instead of ceremony. One did 
not need lights and flowers and song to make the 
heart beat faster, when you found yourself in the 
very city where the great Head of the Church had 
suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, 
and was buried, and on the third day rose again, 
scarce an arrow-shot from the spot where you were 
kneeling. I would have preferred to have gone for 
my Communion to the Bishop's chapel, where there 
is a little more warmth and much more ceremony, 
but it was too far so early in the morning. 

These English churches are most admirable for 
the large number of English-speaking people who 
usually visit Jerusalem ; but as to any impression 
made on the Jewish and Turkish population of the 
city, I should say it was very shadowy. Jerusalem 
has about forty thousand people, and there are no 
less than twent3 r -four religious bodies in it, who 
hate each other as only religious bodies can. 
About half of these are Christians, and no little 
Western village was ever more divided and torn up 
by sectarianism than the Holy City. A large 
guard of Turkish soldiers is always kept under 
arms within a few minutes' walk of the church of 
the Holy Sepulchre, so that they may be ready to 



130 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

put down the riots and fights which Greek and 
Latin Christians are ever ready to get up in that 
world-famed sanctuary. 

The Russian peasants, of whom there are 
always thousands in Jerusalem, seemed to me the 
most truly religious of all present. Of course they 
are very ignorant and very superstitious ; but it 
shows a great, if a simple, faith, to take this long 
journey, and part with their hard-earned money to 
take it, and their every action shows how thor- 
oughly in earnest they are. The Russian govern- 
ment takes splendid care of all these pilgrims . Enor- 
mous barracks areputup, kept scrupulously clean, 
where they are lodged and fed at small prices, and 
there are fine churches exclusively for them. I hope 
sincerely that Russia will one day own the whole 
place and drive out the Turks, though, after all, it 
is just as much a place of pilgrimage for them at 
certain times of the year as it is for Christians. 
They even come from India to pray in the mosque 
of Omar on Mount Moriah. 

When you see how cramped the situation of 
Jerusalem is, and how it never could have been a 
large city, you wonder how the immense crowds 
which came up to the Passover could have been 
accommodated. But the rabbis had a convenient 
way of playing that everything was Jerusalem as 
far as Bethamr at Passover time, and so there was 
a very w r ide territor} r in which people could lodge 
or camp. 

But let us go back to Easter Day. As soon as 
the early Communion was over in the English 



TWO EASTERS IN ONE YEAR. 131 

church, I hurried off to the church of the Holy 
Sepulchre, to see the ceremonies there. You go 
down a street called Christian street, if 3'ou can 
dignify that narrow lane with the name of street. 
It has small shops on either side of it, a wretched 
pavement, and is crowded with picturesque groups 
— Bethlehem women in loud clothes of glaring 
pink and blue, with unveiled faces ; Turkish women 
swathed in blue, with only their eyes visible, the 
eyelids all blackened ; wild Arabs, dirty Russians, 
and still dirtier Jews, with little side curls on their 
temples, and all these tr\ T ing to get out of the way 
of the donkeys loaded with vegetables, disgusting- 
looking meat, lumber, and building stones. Then 
3 r ou turn down a short, narrow, ver}^ dirty street, 
lined with shops for the sale of candles to burn at 
the tomb on Calvary — and very handsome candles 
they are— beads, crosses, and all that olive wood 
and mother-of-pearl work, known all over the 
world as Jerusalem work, and in a moment you 
are in the paved square before the church of the 
Holy Sepulchre. Many Russian peasants were 
there kissing the filthy pavement, though not in 
honor of Easter; for being of the Greek Faith, our 
Easter is nothing to them ; they were in the middle 
of Lent, and the pavement kissing was in honor of 
the holy place. 

Through the church door I passed, casting a 
glance of scorn and dislike at the supercilious old 
Turks squatted on a divan just inside the entrance, 
drinking coffee, smoking, reading the Koran, and 
evidently sneering at the excited crowd of Chris- 



132 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

tians. I felt exactly like throttling one of them, 
but it would have been madness, for I would have 
been landed in a few minutes in a Jerusalem jail, 
which is about equal to an American pigpen. I 
had immediately before me, on entering, the " stone 
of unction," where our Lord was anointed for his 
burial (I accepted in Jerusalem without comment 
all the great holy places, and did not worry about 
their genuineness); this was surrounded by devout 
Russians, kissing and crossing themselves with 
great fervor. Turning around that, I found 
myself before the tomb of our Lord. It was 
blazing with light ; ornamental candles and mag- 
nificent lamps of gold and silver, the gifts of kings, 
covered it from top to bottom. The chapel of the 
Greeks is just opposite the tomb. It was empty 
and desolate. The door was closed and locked, 
and in front of it the throne of the Latin patriarch 
was set up, on which he was seated. Around him 
was grouped a splendid cortege of European 
gentlemen, mostly French, in full uniform, or full 
dress, with orders gleaming on the coat breasts. 
There were many ladies in plain clothes, and there 
was a great crowd of bishops and priests in glit- 
tering vestments, and many monks of all sorts. 
The patriarch himself was a perfect blaze of jewels. 
By slipping a fee into the hand of the porter at the 
Greek chapel, I managed to get in there; and 
climbing up into the narrow gallery over the 
entrance, the whole scene was just b neathme. In 
fact I had " the best seat in the house." 



TWO EASTERS IN ONE YEAR. 133 

Within the tomb, services were being held, 
which of course I could not see; but very soon the 
procession was formed, to go three times around 
the sepulchre. Turkish soldiers kept off the crowd, 
and a most striking and impressive scene it was — 
the gleaming crosses, the banners sparkling with 
jewels, the countless candles, every one bearing 
one, and the gorgeously dressed ecclesiastics. 
Women took part in the procession as well as men. 
Hymns were sung and psalms chanted, though I 
could not distinguish the words; and after the 
third round the whole magnificent spectacle moved 
off to the Latin chapel on the other side of the 
church; and the little Jerusalem street boys resumed 
their game of tag around the tomb, for the irrever- 
ence one sees in this ancient church is very shock- 
ing. The moment the Latin procession had moved 
away, the throne was carried off, the lights put 
out, the seats piled up, the Greek chapel thrown 
open for the Lent services, and the lugubrious 
Lenten chants took the place of the joyous Easter 
music of the Latins. What a commentary on our 
divided Christendom ! Evening Prayer on Easter, 
I enjoyed at the Bishop's chapel; a delightful con- 
trast to the cold, barren English church in the city. 
After prayers some of the congregation went to 
look at a new Calvary and Golgotha which have 
just been found out; but the old one was good 
enough for me. 

So passed one Easter ; the other, the Greek Eas- 
ter, was kept a few weeks later in Constantinople. 
There are twelve days' difference in the Greek 



134 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

Church time and ours, arising from the fact that 
when Pope Gregory reformed the calendar, the 
Greek Church refused to adopt it, and stuck to the 
old style. Full moons, however, that year made 
the difference much more than twelve days ; and it 
was not until the fifth Sunday after our Easter that 
the Greeks in the city of the Sultan gathered for 
the Feast of the Resurrection. There had been no 
sleeping for anybody in Constantinople after mid- 
night on Easter Eve; for tin horns, pistols, yells, 
and all sorts of hideous instruments for noise are 
considered there the proper things to usher in Eas- 
ter, as here to herald Fourth of July. I went to the 
early Communion at the beautiful English church, 
the walls of which are covered with tablets in 
memory of soldiers who perished in the Crimean 
war, and to some of whom every article of the 
church furniture was dedicated in memory. Then 
I hurried down to the shore, and soon a swift 
caique brought me to the other side, and within a 
few steps of the ugly little Greek cathedral which 
was surrounded by a noisy crowd pushing and 
fighting, two or three thousand t^ing to get into 
a building which would scarcely hold five hundred. 
A polite official, however, escorted me to a front 
seat, so raised above the crowd that I was safe 
from the pushing, and could see the procession, 
which was much hustled, and nothing like as fine 
as the Latin one in Jerusalem. The services were 
short, done without am>- reverence, and utterly 
incomprehensible to me. A handsome priest with 
long curls read the Gospel in two or three languages ; 



TWO EASTERS IN ONE YEAR. 



135 



the singing was very poor, and the only really fine 
things were the jeweled mitres and robes of the 
bishops and the patriarch. Nobody seemed £much 
impressed, and I was rather glad when it was over, 
and I could breathe pure air once more. 



WHAT CAN WE DO FOR THE DEPARTED? 

LET us talk a little about the departed and our 
relation to them. Those who are dear to us 
are taken from us. We have been accustomed to 
lavish on them every endearment, every personal 
service. We worked for them ; they were the spur 
of our life, and our greatest joy was to be able to 
make "them happier, no matter at what sacrifice. 
And now all this is over. The great veil has 
dropped between us and them. We tug at its folds, 
but there it hangs, and not all the commands of 
all the emperors, not all the offered treasures of the 
world, can lift its hem. All our ministries are over. 
We can no more encircle with loving arms the little 
form. We can no longer keep watch and ward 
that danger comes not too near ; but still we can- 
not keep out the wish: u 0h, that I could do 
something for thee ; I want to do so much !" Now, 
in answering that wish, I shall assume that death 
does not put a stop to love, or dissolve any true 
relation of love; that those who are behind the veil 
remember those who are still before; that eyes look 
on us which we cannot see, and hearts beat for us 



WHAT CAN WE DO FOR THE DEPARTED ? 137 

which we cannot touch. I said I would assume 
this, and yet I do not know why I should call it an 
assumption, for it is a universal belief. It is human. 
It is natural. Life would be intolerable without 
it. There never was any great creed that was not 
based on the idea that the living and the dead are 
still dear to each other, and that such undying 
things as love, and friendship, and interest, survive 
the touch of time, the worm, the grave. 

I know the first thought is, "I can do nothing 
for my dead ; they do not need me. They have 
everything. Their cup is full. Nothing remains 
for me." Now God has everything, but for all that, 
we can give Him something which pleases Him. 
There are things He wants from us. He wants 
our love, He wants our happiness, He wants to see 
us better men and women. He says in His Holy 
Word that He craves the offering of a contrite 
heart and a meek and lowly spirit. If we can do 
then for Almighty God services which please Him, 
how much more can we do for God's creatures ? 

There is not a man, no matter how rich, how 
highly placed, who cannot be helped by us. You 
think a rich man has everything, but he longs for 
things money cannot buy, nor commands bring 
about. He wants love, sympathy, friendship, and 
the poorest man can give him these. So you see 
that it is false reasoning to say that because the 
departed are in Paradise, and enjoy all its glories, 
you can do nothing for them. They are human 
beings. They have interests on earth. Even Dives 
in the other world felt the deepest interest in his 



138 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

still living brothers, and wanted some one sent to 
warn them. Why, there is a whole crowd of things 
we can do, words we can say, lives we can live, 
which will give the departed the greatest joy. Why 
should it be the angels only who rejoice over the 
penitent? Souls in Paradise and in Hades are a 
great deal nearer to us than angels are. Do you 
not see then how those in Paradise must get hap- 
piness and joy from any attempt you make to do 
good to others, to lessen grief and want and suf- 
fering, to improve men, to bring them to greater 
light, to help them to avoid the very errors into 
which they themselves had fallen when on earth ? 
It will soften greatly the pangs of separation to 
look away from the gloom when we sit mourning, 
and to go to sadder lives and darker homes as a 
messenger from the one who is dead ; to feel that 
you have been sent on this errand by the dead 
child, or wife, or husband you so loved, and that 
they are watching and approving. 

So when jou sigh and say : What can I do for 
the dead ? remember you can do this. You can go 
to the sorrow-laden and the grief-stricken and offer 
them soft words of sympathy. You can do some 
deed of charity which will lessen a little of the 
burden of human pain. You can found, if you are 
rich, some memorial which shall be for ever doing 
good. You can rescue some child from sin, from 
ignorance, from cruelty. You can teach the blessed 
Gospel of Jesus to children. You can help in this 
way or that wa}- the glorious mission of the 
Church. You can show forth in your life greater 



WHAT CAN WE DO FOR THE DEPARTED? 139 

love, purit} r , unselfishness, and all these things will 
give happiness to the spirits in Paradise, for these 
are the things they love and desire to further. 

And there is one thing more you can do for them, 
you can pray for them. The mother kneels down 
and prays for her living boy ; shall the mere fact of 
death shut her up from pra} T ing just the same way 
for her boy gone to Paradise : "Oh God, give him 
new joy, exalt him from glory to glory, grant light 
to him and yet more light " ? Why should I not do 
this ? Am I to be given the foolish reason, "Because 
Romanists do it?" So they also say the Lord's 
Prayer and the Creed ; shall we therefore stop say- 
ing them ? 

The Bible never says that death fixes all 
conditions. They cannot be fixed until the judg- 
ment, if then; and immense changes may take 
place in every human soul before that. You deprive 
3 r ourself, and you deprive those gone before, of 
much comfort and of much joy if you neglect this 
great link of communion. Bind \ r ourself and your 
dead together. They are yours, and you are theirs, 
now and forever. 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE STONES. 

DO you ever think of the testimony to the accu- 
racy of the Bible afforded by ancient build- 
ings, long buried under the rubbish of ages, and 
now being excavated in Assyria, in Egypt, in Jeru- 
salem; tombs with their inscriptions, paintings, 
inscriptions on monuments, those curious cylinders 
of clay found at Nineveh, coins, papyrus rolls, 
and all such things; things which, as you readily 
see, could not be tampered with as manuscripts of 
the Scriptures might be by transcribers? The 
store of these things daily increases as the desire of 
knowledge in man pushes further his digging and 
delving in the wrecks of the past. The mine has 
only just been opened, and we look with confidence 
in a few more years to the greatest light being 
thrown on chronological puzzles and difficulties 
about words and customs which have long 
worried Bible students. 

Of course, in a short paper like this, I can only 
indicate a few examples of what I mean; but these 
may induce you to look more deeply into a very 
interesting subject. You will remember that when 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE STONES. 141 

Abraham lost his wife, he bought a burial place 
for her from Ephraim, the Hittite, and we often 
read in the Bible of Hittites; for example, "Uriah 
the Hittite" and " Solomon sold horses to the 
kings of the Hittites." Nowhere in history could 
one word be found about the Hittites ; and infidels, 
twenty-five }^ears ago, used to say: "This is a 
mistake of the Bible; these Hittites are imag- 
inary." Now, as the rolls and the cylinders are 
deciphered, w r e are getting much information 
about the Hittites during their power and their 
conquests in those far-off days. The Egyptian 
records speak of them often ; in one place it tells 
of a thousand chariots taken from the Hittites. 
There is a papyrus in the British Museum which 
contains along poem about the battles of Rameses 
with them, and an Assyrian obelisk contains 
accounts of them. We know the very year — 717 
B . C . — when they were wiped out of existence by 
Sargon, the Assyrian king, and their splendid 
empire, which had extended far and wide for many 
centuries, was destroyed. Do you not see what a 
grand confirmation that is of the Bible statement 
so long pronounced to be incorrect ? 

Come down now to the time when the Israelites 
were in Egypt. We read in the Bible of a king who 
knew not Joseph, and of the slavish work the 
Hebrews had to do in building two great treasure 
cities, Pithom and Rameses; and how the king 
descended to the mean trick of denying them straw 
and making them gather reeds to keep the unbaked 
bricks together. Not many years ago a magnifi- 



142 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

cently embalmed mummy was found in Egypt, 
easily known from the inscriptions to be the 
mummy of Rameses II.; and so well preserved that 
you can easily trace the resemblance between the 
embalmed face and the statues and portraits of 
him all over Egypt. On one inscription his name 
is connected with one of the cities the Israelites 
had to build ; and now the other city, Pithom, has 
been found, with treasure chambers in it, and 
reeds in the brick partitions. There seems but 
little doubt that this was the king who oppressed 
the Hebrews, and again Scripture is confirmed by 
discovery. 

Now we come to the Moabite stone. In the 
year 1868 there was discovered, in the land of 
Moab, a basalt stone covered with inscriptions. 
The Arabs who discovered it broke it all to pieces, 
but the fragments were carefully gathered up and 
put together, and the stone is in the museum of 
the Louvre. See now how that stone corroborates 
Scripture. We read in II. Kings, that Mesha, the 
King of Moab, paid tribute to the King of Israel 
of 100,000 lambs and 100,000 rams, with their 
wool ; but that when Ahab died the King of Moab 
rebelled against Israel. Now the inscription on 
the stone, which is in the oldest form of the 
Hebrew alphabet, reads: "I am Mesha, King of 

Moab The King of Israel oppressed 

Moab, and my god Chemosh was angry with him. 
His son Ahab succeeded him, and one who said : 
I will oppress Moab, and my god said go : Go 
take Nebo against Israel, and I went and took 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE STONES. 143 

it." Nowhere else in the world is there a line 
about Mesha, only on this stone and in the Bible ; 
and do you not see how the short and simple story 
of that Book is thus accidentally, as we say, 
confirmed ? 

The curious libraries of the kings of Nineveh 
have been found, the books all being clayc}dinders, 
stamped with cuneiform characters; and these 
books of clay are filled with references to the king- 
doms of Israel and Judah, and the events which 
are related in the Bible, in Chronicles and Kings 
and Isaiah. For example, there is one inscription : 
"As for Hezekiah of Judah who had not sub- 
mitted to my yoke, I besieged and captured forty- 
six of his strong cities." Could there be a more 
pointed witness to the truth of the Scripture narra- 
tive than this? Infidels have said there was no 
such person as Belshazzar. A cylinder has been 
found with a prayer of the King of Babylon for 
his eldest son Belshazzar. 

There are many more examples if I had the 
space to give them ; but certainly these will serve 
to introduce you to one of the most interesting 
and striking lines of illustration of the Bible. 
There are one or two not very expensive books 
3 r ou might get and read, especially one by Prof. 
Sayce, who is a great authority- in such matters. 



THE ROGATION DAYS. 

ONE of the recollections of my boyhood is being 
taken by my mother to a sewing society. 
As I was intended for the ministry, a visit to such 
societies w r as considered part of my training. I 
listened to the respectable matrons pulling to 
pieces a neighboring clergyman who was guilty of 
that awful crime of Puseyism, which was at that 
time a burning question. One lady said : " Do you 
know, he keeps Rogation Hays ? " I remember the 
shudder of horror that went through the assembly, 
and how all thought there -was but one step 
beyond that, and that was Rome. And indeed 
very few people then had any idea w 7 hat Rogation 
days were. In an obscure place in the Prayer 
Book it was mentioned that there were such 
things ; but it was not until the revised book came 
into use a few years ago that there was any 
general knowledge of those days. No service of 
any kind marked them ; but now we have special 
Lessons for them and special pra} r ers, and the Sun- 
day before Ascension is called in the rubic before 
these prayers, " Rogation Sunday." Even now, 



THE ROGATION DAYS. 145 

the Prayer Book does not tell, except in an infer- 
ential way, why these days are kept ; and compar- 
atively few parishes ever keep them, since they 
have no especial Collect, Epistle and Gospel. They 
originated in this wa} r : In the year 452, the dis- 
trict around Yienne, in France, was laid desolate 
by earthquakes and fires, and the prospect of a 
good harvest was very doubtful. The Bishop of 
Yienne, Mamertus by name, appointed the three 
daj^s before Ascension Day in that year as a solemn 
fast, when all Christian people were to go in pro- 
cession, singing litanies, to a church outside the 
walls, where God was to be asked to pardon the 
sins of His people, and grant them a good return 
for the seed just sown. 

As far as the Western Church is concerned, I 
would fix this as the definite time from which we 
date the kind of prayer we call litany, short sup- 
plications with responses, one of the most highly 
prized and effective parts of our service. This 
particular form of devotion "took" (to use a 
modern phrase) very rapidly, so that in the fifth 
centur\^, St. Caesar of Aries writes that the Roga- 
tion days were ' ' regularly observed by the Church 
throughout the world." You will find that this 
was the way in which the greater part of our 
ritual observances obtained a footing. Some 
church began some ceremony, or form of devotion. 
It found favor with the adjoining churches as 
likely to increase piety. Then neighboring dioceses 
took it up, and after a while it became general 
throughout the national Church, and so spread 



146 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

over the Christian world. The same process is 
going on now. For example: Many years ago 
one of my parishioners heard in a church in New 
York a hymn sung kneeling before the Litam r . He 
told me of it, and how edifying he found it, and I 
introduced it into the service. No other western 
parish then had it, but it spread very rapidly, and 
now is quite general. Witness also the very rapid 
spread of the Three Hours' devotion for Good 
Friday. When the Prayer Book is revised at the 
end of another century, provision will undoubtedly 
be made for that service. 

But to return to the Rogation days. Thej- are 
the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before 
Ascension ; and as far as our Communion is con- 
cerned, their object is to ask God to bless the 
labors of the husbandman, and to grant such 
seasonable weather that we may gather in the 
fruits of the earth. The Litany ought to be said 
on all these days, in memory of the origin of these 
rogations or petitions, for the word comes from 
the Latin, rogare, to petition. We have no pro- 
cessions outside the churches on these da\-s, as far 
as I know, but they are quite common abroad. I 
happened to be travelling through Bavaria once 
on the Rogation da} r s, and it was very pleasant, 
as the train passed from village to village, to see, 
marching along the newly-sown fields, processions 
headed by the priest, and cross, and choir, singing 
litanies. In England, from very ancient days, the 
parishioners walked around the bounds of the 
parish, on the Rogations, saying the Litany and 



THE ROGATION DAYS. 147 

thel03cl and 104th Psalms; and 3-011 can find now 
in very many parishes, crosses which mark where 
the processions stopped, and the curate explained 
what they were doing, and offered suitable prayers. 
So, go to church on the Rogation days ; or if 
you can not, pray at home that the harvest may 
be good, and that the ground may bring forth 
abundantly. Do not be kept from such prayers by 
the statement that all nature is governed by laws, 
and that ground will only produce and fruit ripen 
according to the rain and sun, and richness of the 
earth, and labor bestowed on it. We all know 
that, and we would not plant a seed unless we 
were sure that great laws were back of us which 
would ensure its ripening with proper care. We 
would none of us be silly enough to pray for rain 
in Arizona, for example, during the months when 
rain never falls. But while we know all about 
law, we also know that even with our feeble wills 
we can counteract law. I can make a ball fly up, 
when the law of gravity- is that it shall fly down ; 
and if I can do such things, what cannot God do ? 
He may help the harvest in a thousand ways of 
which we are ignorant, and law exist ail the same, 
and we are ri,2;ht in praying for any good thing. 



ASCENSION DAY. 

YOU will often hear people call Maundy Thurs- 
day Holy Thursday, but it is a great mistake. 
Holy Thursday is the common name for Ascension 
Day ; and just as there is one Friday particularly 
good, so is there one Thursday particularly holy, and 
that is the Thursday when our Lord withdrew His 
visible presence from this world ; we must not say 
"left this world," for as He says, wherever two or 
three are gathered together in His name, there He 
is in the midst of them. He is before us in the per- 
son of the poor and the needy. He is really and 
truly present with us and for us in the Eucharist, 
so that He is just as much connected with the 
world as when He parted with His disciples, only 
we see Him not. It is impossible to tell just when 
Ascension Day took its place in the sacred 
calendar; both St. Augustine and St. Ch^sostom 
have sermons on it, showing that in their time it 
was generally observed; and our own common 
sense tells us that the early Christians would not 
have been likely to forget, or to celebrate with 
scant honor, the last day our Lord passed with 
them. 



ASCENSION DAY. 149 

There are four festivals which stand far before 
any of the others: Christmas, Easter, Ascension, 
and Whitsunday ; and Ascension is one of the very 
few days in our Prayer Book which has an octave, 
that is, a week of special services, marked by a 
preface in the Communion Office. It is a day when 
every Churchman ought to make a point of going 
to church to celebrate the proudest event in the 
history of man; the day when human nature 
reached its greatest glory, being taken by our 
Lord into the other world, and in His person 
placed on the throne of heaven; so that a Man 
rules the whole creation, a Man who is also God. 

We commonly say our Lord went up from the 
top of Olivet, but the Scripture does not say so. 
On the contrary, it says : " He led them out as far 
as Bethany," which is nearly a mile from what is 
known as Mt. Olivet ; and again it says in Acts, 
that after the Ascension, the Apostles returned to 
Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is 
from Jerusalem a Sabbath day's journey, that is, 
a mile. This shows conclusively that it could not 
have been that summit which directly overhangs 
the city, and on which St. Helena built a church. 
The olive woods around Bethany where our Lord 
passed so much time with dear friends, was a 
much likelier place for His leave-taking than the 
glare and publicity of what we call the Mount of 
Olives, which can be seen from every house in 
Jerusalem, and which seems near enough, in that 
clear air, to reach with a stone from the city wall. 
The Turks have a mosque there, and they show 



150 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

the place from which our Lord ascended, which is, 
of course, a pious fraud. 

We also commonly say, our Lord went up. 
Children may say that, but intelligent men must 
know that there is neither up nor down in this 
universe; that the same ether and stars are all 
around the world ; and that if we were carried to 
the moon, the world would look to us just as the 
moon does now. The Scripture does not mean by 
"up " that our Lord went travelling on from star 
to star until He got to some highest point; but 
just that He passed out of sight, a cloud shutting 
Him out from view, passed into that inner and 
unseen universe where He now dwells. For the 
proof that there is an unseen universe close to 
this, out of which this came, and into which it is 
passing, I commend you to a scientific treatise 
called " The Unseen Universe." I have not the 
space to discuss that here. 

But, some will say, our Lord must have gone 
very far away; for St. Stephen looked up stead- 
fastly into heaven, and saw it opened, and the Son 
of Man standing on the right hand of God. Yes, 
but why suppose the saint looked so far away? 
Is it not more reasonable to suppose that his 
spiritual sight was so sharpened, as is very often 
the case with dying persons, that it pierced the veil 
which hides the other world from us, and he had a 
glimpse of the unseen, not so far off, but so different ? 
There is no need to bring in a distant view, as if St. 
Stephen's material e^-eshad been endowed with tel- 
escopic power. We can see very well (the proofs are 



ASCENSION DAY. 151 

very abundant about sleep-walking people) without 
ever opening our material eyes, and so can we 
hear. St. Paul heard the words our Lord uttered 
out of the unseen world, on that memorable day 
before Damascus, while those around him heard 
only sounds. 

Do you ask what we know about this world 
into which our Lord has withdrawn ? The Scrip- 
ture figures about it — pearly gates, golden streets, 
seas of glass, and so on — convey merely the 
impression that human words are inadequate to 
describe its glory. They give no definite idea. One 
sentence of our Lord about it is, however, quite 
plain. He says it is a place of many mansions; 
which must mean a place with different planes, 
different states, different spheres, so that the con- 
ditions in that world are as varying as in this. 
How could it be otherwise ? Every hour hundreds 
of spirits are pouring into it from this side, all 
different, no more fitted to be together there than 
here. Each one must go to his appropriate place; 
and there is ever progress and ever evolution, and 
(blessed comfort) our Lord Himself prepares the 
place for His children, and leads them to it at 
their death. 



CHARACTER THE SOURCE OF TRUE CHURCH 
PROGRESS. 

WHEN we want to judge of the outcome or 
the utility of any society or organization 
among men, we do not, as a rule, go to the consti- 
tution and by-laws of the society to find out what 
its purposes are. We ought to do that. It is only 
fair that we should, but we do not. We make up 
our judgment from the members, from their walk 
and conversation. If we see them, as a general 
thing, the better for belonging to the society in 
which they are so prominent, we are apt to form 
a good opinion of the society; but if we see no 
improvement we are likely to conclude that the 
society does not accomplish its purpose. Of course 
the published principles of the society are very 
greatly taken into account. When we know an 
association to be called, " The Jolly Good Fellows," 
and its open purpose to be the cultivation of con- 
viviality, we do not expect to find its members 
models of temperance and quiet living. When, 
however, an organization proclaims loudly that it 
has for its aim and object the improvement of 



CHARACTER THE SOURCE OF TRUE CHURCH PROGRESS. 153 

character, the raising the tone of daily life, and 
when we see the rank and file of that society not 
showing the least improvement in character, and 
content with a very low standard of daily life, we 
have a certain right to say : I do not care to know 
much about the laws of that society; whatever 
they are, the members are not governed by them at 
all, and their membership has not improved them 
in any way. Theoretically, I repeat, this is not 
what we ought to do ; practically, it is always 
done, and neither you nor I can change it. 

Now the same mode of treatment is applied to 
that great society to which we belong, the Church 
of Christ. The Church, of course, rests upon the 
life of Christ as laid down in the Word of God. 
The teachings of the Lord Jesus are proclaimed to 
be its teachings. It exists to improve humanity ; 
to be the channel by which divine grace is conveyed 
to men, so that theymaynot have to fight unaided, 
and therefore in vain, the world, the flesh, and the 
devil. Its reason of being is to draw men nearer 
to God, and to lessen the selfishness human beings 
ordinarily display. These principles of the Church 
are found in the Bible, and are set forth in creeds, 
confessions, and liturgies ; but as a general thing, 
men do not investigate these documents, but form 
their judgment of the Church from the Churchmen 
and women. They will not even read history and 
see what splendid specimens of men and women 
the Church has produced ; but make up their minds 
from the Christians around them, whom they meet 
every day in business and in society. Now I repeat 



154 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

that this is not quite fair;btit we will have to take 
things as we find them, and recognize that the 
influence of the Church upon the world will be 
determined, not so much by getting men to inves- 
tigate its claims, as by what they see of the char- 
acter and life of its adherents. I might set forth 
in the most lucid and eloquent way the great doc- 
trines of Christianity ; I might picture my Redeem- 
er's life and sacrifice in the most moving terms ; I 
might describe the joys of heaven and the pains of 
hell as never man did before me ; it would not pro- 
duce half the effect upon outsiders that would be 
produced by the sight of a church full of men and 
women really practising love, meekness, gentleness, 
faith, joy, and every other form of unselfishness; 
doing business in the fear of God ; mingling in 
unity with a view to mutual help and ennoblement ; 
enjoying without excess and without sin, the joy- 
ousness of life, ever bearing in mind their sonship 
to God and their brothership to men ; striving to 
carry out as far as erring men can carry out, the 
model set them in the life of Jesus. 

Since this is so, what a tremendous responsi- 
bility falls upon ever3 r Church member ! His great 
object must be, not the getting himself into heaven, 
or just shaving the gate of hell; but the so living 
that men may be led, seeing his unselfish and 
uplifting life, to conclude, "I, too, will try that 
way. It helps all those people who are of the same 
cla3 r that I am, surely it will help me." You think 
that the reason why the Church does not win more 
people is because she is so hampered by the attacks 



CHARACTER THE SOURCE OF TRUE CHURCH PROGRESS. 155 

of infidels and the obstinacy of error and igno- 
rance ; but I tell you that while these all may be 
pebbles which impede the smooth flow of the river, 
the great rock which chokes the water, makes it 
foam and eddy, and bars navigation, is the 
ordinary life of the ordinar\' Christian. 

Men have often said to me: "I remain outside 
the Church, not because the doctrines are often so 
incomprehensible; not because of any great sin which 
I am unwilling to give up ; not because I do not 
want to serve God; but because I doubt, judging 
from what I know of the Church people around 
me, whether it would be of any benefit to me to 
take the Church vows." What answer can you 
make to this, unless you can instantly point to 
many and many a life known to the objector, 
which gives evidence of the hallowing effect of 
Christianity, and which shows the inbreathing of 
the Holy Spirit? The moment the Church life 
sinks so low that we must remain dumb when 
we are asked to show in the world around us 
people who are the better for the Church and 
for Christ, that moment marks the end of the 
Church as a factor in the elevation of the race. 
But such a moment has never struck, even in the 
darkest hours of the Church's history. There 
always has been, and there are now, numberless 
examples of what the following of Christ could do 
for men. The parish that is without them is a 
disgrace to its Lord. Remember, then, that if you 
want the Church to spread, you, yourself, must 
live your part of the true Christian life. 



MEANING OF WHITSUNDAY. 

IN our Prayer Book, Whitsunday is written as 
one word, except in the Octave, when we find 
Whitsun-week. This rather confuses the deriva- 
tion, but I will give you your choice of three, for 
doctors disagree as to which is the right one. 
Some contend that the word ought to be Whitsun- 
day, and the Whitsun is got in this way : Pente- 
cost, in German, Pfingsten ; old German, Whing- 
sten ; old English, Whitsun ; or } r ou may prefer 
White Sunday, so-called from the robes of the 
candidates for Baptism, Whitsunday having been 
anciently a great day for baptizing; or you may 
incline to Wit-Sunday, as marking the da}- on 
which the "wit," or wisdom of the spirit was 
given to man. This last one is very taking. In 
the Roman Church it is called Pentecost, and the 
Sundays which we call Sundays after Trinity, are 
called Sundays after Pentecost. 

But no matter how you get the word, the day 
commemorates the coming of divine wisdom into 
the hearts and lives of the Apostles of Christ, 
which took place when they were all together in a 



MEANING OF WHITSUNDAY. 157 

room on the Jewish Feast of Pentecost. A strong 
wind shook the room, a namelike tongue (a lam- 
bent flame) hovered over each head, and every one 
there was filled with a sense of holy inspiration, 
and they began to speak with other tongues, just 
as the Holy Spirit guided them to do. This being 
entirely a supernatural occurrence, could only be 
perfectly explained by a supernatural person ; and 
all that I can do will be to tell you what some of 
it means to me. The wind and the flame seem 
appropriate marks to me of the coming of a new 
time, the beginning of a new life, the first step on 
the splendid ladder of liberty, which even yet is 
not half mounted. Such an event called for some 
striking outward sign. When such events occur 
in a nation's history there are salutes from 
a hundred guns ; there are tempests of applause ; 
there is great excitement. So when this great 
event happened in the kingdom of God, He marked 
it by awful signs of His own, so that those who 
saw it never could forget it, and never could confuse 
the inspiration of genius with that inspiration. 

There is an inspiration of genius. There were 
clever men in Moses' flock who drew plans for the 
decoration of the tabernacle. The Bible says the}- 
were inspired. It says Samson was inspired with 
courage when he met and slew thirty men at 
Ashkelon. It says David was an inspired player, 
and the same thing can be said now. It was an 
inspiration that flashed into Newton's mind the 
law of gravitation. The great poets are inspired. 
Raphael painted by inspiration. This peculiar 



158 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

gift of God distinguishes the genius from the 
ordinary man. Study and wealth and place could 
never teach men such things. The}' are inspired to 
do them. Then there are higher kinds of inspira- 
tion, and this recorded here is the highest of all, 
the inspiration of men of little education and 
narrow Jew minds with the great plan of salva- 
tion, the Gospel of Christ; inspiring them to tell 
it everywhere, to tell it right, to tell it convincingly, 
to tell it so that generation after generation of 
men could take it to their hearts, and themselves 
catch this same inspiring spirit which will enable 
them to rise out of the dust of appetite and sin, 
into a clearer air of high resolve and noble achieve- 
ment. Certainly the day which the Hoiy Spirit of 
God chose that He might breathe Himself in this 
glorious way into the hearts of men, might well 
have been marked out by those great symbols of 
inspiration — wind, blowing now gently,now firmly, 
as the Spirit does, invisible as the Spirit is ; and fire 
which burns and tries and lights up in the material 
w^orld, as the Spirit does in the immaterial. 

But the tongues with which it is said they 
spake, what does that mean ? Now if I should 
undertake to tell you all that the old Fathers and 
the young fathers have imagined it meant, this 
five-minute talk would have to be stretched into a 
five-month talk, and you would not know much 
more at the end than you know now. I am 
inclined to think that you and I had better take 
the common sense view of it, that it means just 
what it says ; that the men who were in that 



MEANING OF WHITSUNDAY. 150 

room went out in the street and preached, and 
that either every man who heard them, understood 
what they said, or that they spake, some one, 
some another, language, so that groups recogniz- 
ing their own language, soon gathered around the 
man who was speaking it, and were able, with 
that pleasure a man in a strange land always feels 
at hearing his own tongue, to follow the speaker. 



. & ^.v, ~ .. ~ "~"& 



1 have never been able to decide for myself whether 
the miracle was in the hearers or the speakers. 

There is not one word in Scripture to tell us 
whether this gift was a lasting one or not. In the 
account of the labors of the Apostles, it is never 
said the\- made use of it. As they worked in 
regions where Greek was the general language, 
they did not much need it. But however that may 
be, this Whitsunday preaching was a wonderful 
sign that all men are one in the speech and tongue 
of Jesus Christ. 



THE EMBER DAYS. 

WHAT do Ember Days mean, and what should 
we do on them ? 
There are four sets of Ember Da}^, occurring on 
the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday after the 
first Sunday in Lent, after Whitsunday, after Sept. 
14th, and after Dec. 13th, corresponding to spring, 
summer, autumn, and winter. The name " Ember" 
is probably a corrupted form of the Latin words, 
Quatuor Tempora, the four seasons. This in Ger- 
man was shortened into Quatember, and in Eng- 
lish into Ember. It means the four times in the 
year when Churchmen are to fast and pray for 
God's blessing on that particular season of the 
3^ear. These times began to be fully observed in 
Italy about the 5th century, and not until much 
later outside of that country. They do not exist 
at all in the calendar of the Eastern Church. In 
the whole Western Church, however, they have 
gradually come to be the stated times for the 
ordaining of priests and deacons, and it is this fea- 
ture on which we now lay particular stress in the 
keeping of the Ember Days. If you look in your 



THE EMBER DAYS. 161 

Prayer Book you will see in the Occasional Pray- 
ers, two very beautiful prayers which are to be 
used in the ' ' weeks preceding the stated times of 
ordination," meaning the Ember times. Unless 
your priest was careless, or you yourself were pay- 
ing little attention, 3^ou must often have heard 
these prayers on the four Sundays in the year 
which follow or precede the Ember days; and if 
there is a dairy service in \^our parish, and you go 
to it, on the Ember days themselves. 

It does not follow that only at those times can 
priests and deacons be ordained, for there is no 
morning in the year when it could not be done ; but 
there are stated times — stated so that the whole 
Church may be praying together that God's bless- 
ing may so guide the Bishops and pastors of the 
flock that they may not lay hands suddenly (that 
is, without due consideration) on any man, but 
may faithfully and wisely make choice of fit per- 
sons to serve in the sacred ministry of the Church ; 
and also to pray that God's grace and benediction 
may be given to those ordained, that both by their 
life and doctrine they may show forth God's glory 
and set forward the salvation of all men. It is a 
very grand and inspiring thought that at certain 
four times in the year in every Episcopal and 
Roman Catholic church, the priest and the people 
are putting up common supplications for those 
who are to take on themselves the trials, the duties, 
the joys, of the sacred ministry. Trials, because 
the scanty salaries, the small effect of all their 
labors, the huge mountains of sin ever confronting 



162 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

them, are trials ; duties, for what duty can be so 
weighty and so absorbing as the care of souls ; and 
joys, because there is no higher, nobler, purer joy 
than that of being useful, of having one's whole 
life consecrated to the bettering the life of your fel- 
lows, and being the channels by which God has 
chosen to convey sacramental grace and help to 
the faithful. 

Have you ever thought at the Ember times, of 
your especial connection with them, and that you 
were called upon^to add your voice to the prayer 
for those to be ordained ; and that you were bound 
up in the great net of the Apostolic Succession, 
Bishop after Bishop, priest after priest, succeeding 
one another as Ember days succeed to Ember 
days? Lay people in the American Church are 
very apt to forget how closely they are connected 
with every ordination that takes place. You think 
it is an affair which only concerns Bishops and 
priests, but you are very much mistaken. No 
Bishop, priest, or deacon, can be brought to ordi- 
nation in our Church without laymen playing a 
most important part in it. Among the papers 
which it is absolutely necessary for a young man 
wishing to be ordained deacon to present to the 
Bishop, is a certificate from the vestry of his par- 
ish, all laymen, and from the Standing Committee, 
composed of clergymen and laymen. When a 
deacon wishes to be a priest, he again must have 
the lay signatures of the Standing Committee, and 
before a Bishop can be consecrated, Standing Com- 
mittees, equally with his peers, must consent to it. 



THE EMBER DAYS. 163 

You see then how intimated the lay element is 
bound up with the Ember days ; and it ought to 
make you very careful, in the first place, what ves- 
trymen 3'ou elect, since they may at any time be 
called upon to recommend some one for Holy 
Orders ; and in the second place, to make you very 
earnest in your prayers for the guidance of your 
Bishop in choosing men, for ultimately the choice 
rests with him and he does not pretend to be infal- 
lible, and also for the candidate that he may not 
lightly and unadvisedly take on himself the awful 
responsibilities of the priesthood. Unless a man 
loves his priestly office, not for worldly advantage, 
or for the social rank it gives him, but for the 
opportunities it offers fordoing good to men, I can 
imagine no drearier life than his must be. I once 
knew a priest who had taken Orders to please his 
father and mother, and for certain temporal 
advantages, and he told me he felt like a convict 
with a ball and chain around his leg. He was not 
a hypocrite, and he knew that he was in a false 
position, but he had not the courage to leave it, 
and lived and died an unhappy and discontented 
man. 

Pray for your Bishop, and for all the clergy, 
but especially for your own parish priest, not only 
on Ember days, but on all days. No men need 
prayer more and crave it more, and none will be 
more grateful for it. 



THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY. 

ANYONE who is not an expert theologian hesi- 
tates in regard to writing anything about 
the great doctrine of the Trinity, for fear of a hue 
and cry being raised against him that he is a 
Sabellian or a Monophysite, or a Monothelite, or 
something of the sort. Do you ask me to explain 
those big words ? I do not think it best to do so, 
for fear you might think you were one ; just as 
young medical students when they read about 
diseases, are very apt to imagine they have all the 
symptoms themselves. Of course if you should 
happen to be one of those things you could not be 
burned or choked for it as your ancestors were, 
but you would have to hear a great deal of bad 
language about yourself. I hope that you are, as 
I am, a good Orthodox Trinitarian, and say with 
all your heart your Litany and }'our Glorias, and 
indulge in no useless speculations. I came to this 
conclusion long ago. 

The whole Church once investigated the Scrip- 
ture doctrine of the nature of God to its very 
depths ; years were spent on it. The noblest minds 



THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY. 165 

in the Christian Church gave it the whole wealth 
of their intellect. Great councils of the Church, in 
which the whole Christian world was either repre- 
sented, or which that world afterward accepted, 
pronounced upon it. Nothing new in the way of 
proof can possibly now be said about it, and I am 
perfectly willing and glad to abide by their 
decisions. All that they could do was to state 
what the Apostles and Evangelists had written, 
and the conviction of the early Christians as to 
the meaning of what they said. They could not 
explain the doctrine, for the simple reason that 
man cannot explain God. A horse can understand 
certain traits about humanity, that man is 
master, that he is gentle or cruel, that he must 
look to him for food, shelter, etc.; but how little a 
horse can understand of that wonderful thing, the 
body, the soul, the spirit of man. So I, a man, 
being made in the image of God, can understand, 
to some degree, some of His attributes, His power, 
His glor_v, His fatherly care, His sympathy; but 
how little I know of the whole awful being of God, 
what He is, His nature, His essence. All that }^ou 
or I can do is to accept the statements of God's 
Word as interpreted by God's Church from the 
earliest ages, and believe in God the Father, God 
the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, Three Persons 
in one Godhead, feeling all the while that we are 
expressing ourselves only in the best possible 
words human skill could furnish for the statement 
of unfathomable things, and with very great 



166 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

tolerance for those who feel they must use other 
terms in speaking about God. 

But while we may not be able to understand 
fully the nature of God, there are many thoughts 
and many illustrations which are very useful in 
helping us to understand it better than we do. 
Let us talk about them a little. Do not let the 
argument that a Holy Trinity implies something 
contrary to reason have the least effect upon you. 
Very few thoughts will show you that the doctrine 
of a Holy Unity is not a bit more reasonable. 
Unitarians say of God that He is omnipresent. 
Can you comprehend a Deity being in all places at 
the same time, omniscient? Is it at all in the 
power of your mind to understand a person know- 
ing the past, the present, and the future all at 
once? So you see that the idea of God in one 
Person is not one whit easier to comprehend than 
the idea of God in three Persons. It is not very 
difficult for you to grasp the idea of God your 
Father, that He is not a cold, cruel destiny, wield- 
ing a sceptre of changeless purpose, but a dear 
parent who loves His children and does all that 
He can do (limiting Himself as He has by granting 
them free-will) to make them good, obedient, and 
therefore happy. But when we try to think of 
this God we must think of Him as a man, because 
our minds can only think of an intelligent being in 
that way. You can, as the Scripture writers often 
do, use figures, a sword coming out of His mouth, 
and rays out of His hand ;but you feel that all that 



THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY. 167 

is figurative, and your mind will run back to the 
idea of a man of awful power and glory. 

Now just think how admirably the doctrine of 
God the Son born of the Virgin, fits in with thatne- 
cessity of human thought. In the light of the Trin- 
ity you raise your e} r es to the figure of your dear 
Lord clothed with this humanit\^, but perfect God, 
your Brother and your Redeemer. Then when the 
whisper thrills through your soul, "Do this ! " "Do 
not do that ! " you cry to yourself, " It is the inspir- 
ing Spirit of God," and so in the light of the 
Trinity again you kneel before God the Spirit. 
You will find that these three thoughts of God as 
the Father, as the Man, as the indwelling Spirit, 
and yet one invisible God, who cannot be lessened, 
and who cannot share His place with another, are 
really the exhaustive thoughts we men can have 
about God. 

You will find in your own nature a wonderful 
illustration of the three in one. You must recog- 
nize in yourself the physical man, living the animal 
life, the intellectual man, exploring the universe 
and day by day making greater progress, and the 
man of feeling who loves, who hates, who sympa- 
thizes ; and yet all these co-exist in the same man, 
three and } r et one. Sometimes one of these persons 
acts and sometimes another, but no one can act 
without the other two. You see how they are 
separated, and you see how they are interwoven; 
so is it with the persons of the Godhead. 



ST. LUKE. 

LET us talk a little about St. Luke. A great 
many people always consider him one of the 
Apostles, but he was not, and it is not even certain 
that he was one of the seventy disciples . Indeed, it 
seems most probable that he was one of St. Paul's 
converts, and he certainly was his constant and 
affectionate companion. He implies that he was 
not an eye witness of Jesus' life, but that he "had 
perfect understanding of all things from the very 
first." The proper title for him is "Evangelist," 
which means a writer or letter of the evangel, or 
Gospel, or good tidings. He also wrote the Acts 
of the Apostles. Do you ask how we know one 
man wrote both? Why, from the same reasons 
that we know Dickens wrote both the Curiosity 
Shop and Pickwick Papers ; because the style, the 
words chosen, the tone, is the same. A Greek 
scholar easily concludes that one man wrote the 
two books, from the very first ascribed to St. Luke. 
He was brought up a doctor, and St. Paul calls 
him, in one place ' ' the beloved physician ; ' ' but that 
of itself would not prove him to have been any 



ST. LUKE. 169 

higher in station than the Apostles, for in those 
times many doctors were slaves ; but it is evident 
from his writings that he had been more carefully 
educated than St. Peter or St. John. Tradition 
says that he was a painter, and I have seen one or 
two pictures he is said to have painted. If his 
doctoring was no better than his painting, his 
patients were to be pitied. He is not mentioned 
many times in the sacred narrative, but just the 
few times that his name occurs tell us more about 
him and show up his character better than a big 
book w T ould, stuffed full of commonplaces. An 
artist can, with a few strokes of the brush, put 
before you a truer conception of a face than a tyro 
laboring for weeks could ever do. 

Let us notice these two or three little points, 
and see how grand a man they depict, and how 
much we can learn from him and are indebted to 
him, entirely independent of the priceless debt we 
owe him in having left us such treasures in his 
books. Once St. Paul, writing to his pupil and 
adopted son, St. Timothy, laments his loneliness, 
and speaks of some who had gone away, and he 
adds the words : " Only Luke is with me." Now 
we immediately judge from that, St. Luke to have 
been a fearless and steadfast man. He was not 
afraid of sharing St. Paul's imprisonment; he was 
not afraid of Roman dungeons, and all the trials 
which menaced Christians then when they were 
hated and despised, and considered just what we 
consider anarchists now, as enemies to the State. 
He stuck by his friend, and that is the kind of 



170 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

friend we want. A real friend is one who, no 
matter whether we are in jail or out of jail, still 
holds our hands and still remains by our side. 

Then in his letter to the Colossians St. Paul 
calls St. Luke "the beloved physician." Now of 
course he may be thinking of his own debt of 
gratitude to St. Luke. St. Paul, you know, was 
a man in quite delicate health ; and it was a great 
comfort to him to have always near him a skilled 
doctor like St. Luke. It was enough to make him 
love him. This epithet, however, was one which 
St. Paul evidently knew those to whom he was 
writing would understand when he called his doctor 
"beloved." That was the way, doubtless, in which 
people generally spoke of him ; and is there any 
body who is more loved in a family than a truly 
sympathetic and competent doctor? I have had, 
as president of a large hospital, a great deal to do 
with doctors; and while they have weaknesses (no 
more than priests have), I wish to say that I have 
never found any body of men more unselfish and 
more eager to help humanity. A doctor does more 
charitable work, and gives more time to the poor 
than any other man ; and I have been often greatly 
touched to see the hours on hours of the most 
exhausting labor which a doctor, whose time was 
gold, would give to some poor colored girl who 
could not pay a cent. Do not sneer, as the devil 
did when speaking about Job, and say : "He does 
it to get more skill, and because it is an interesting 
case." He does it nine times out of ten because he 
wishes to relieve suffering, and that is a trait in 



ST. LUKE. 171 

which he draws very near his Lord. That St. 
Luke had the pet name of ' the beloved physician " 
speaks volumes for him, and shows him to have 
been a man of sympathy and skill, a loving, kind- 
hearted, and genial doctor; and there are no 
better citizens and companions than that sort of 
plrysicians. 

But there is still another hint about St. Luke 
which still more strongly brings out his portrait. 
The second Epistle to the Corinthians was written 
from Philippi by Titus and Luke (St. Paul, remem- 
ber, rarely wrote, his eyes were weak, and he 
generally dictated), and St. Paul, speaking of 
Titus, speaks of his companion as "the brother 
whose praise is in the Gospel throughout the 
churches." Now I have read a great many 
laudatory articles about men, filling columns ; but 
I do not think that if St. Paul had written such an 
article, he could have said more than in those few 
words. If I heard that all the churches praised a 
clergyman, I should conclude that he had eloquence, 
tact, sincerity, faith, logical ability, zeal, and 
adaptation ; and when you give those to the quali- 
ties I have already mentioned, courage, steadfast- 
ness, sympathy and skill, you have about as good 
a pattern of a man as can be turned out. Church 
hospitals are often and very properly called after 
him. 

May the diseases of our souls, as the Collect 
says, be healed b} r the wholesome medicine of St. 
Luke's doctrine. 



ALL ANGELS. 

THE feast of St. Michael and All Angels is with 
us now, and it is the right time to talk a 
little about the holy angels. Even if we did not 
find a word in Scripture about intelligent beings 
between God and man, our own reason would 
lead us to conclude that there were such beings. 
As we look from ourselves down the line we see a 
wonderful succession of living creatures, decreasing 
gradually in intelligence, until a simple cell of life 
is reached ; and we would reason from that, that 
also upward, in an ever-increasing mental and 
spiritual expansion, must rise the chain of glorious 
existences toward the unapproachable majesty of 
God. The Christian doctrine of evolution has 
brought out a more magnificent conception of the 
whole universe of God than was ever before 
imagined. 

But wholly apart from logical conclusions, we 
believers in the revealed Word of God, find stated 
there, in the clearest and most distinct terms, not 
only the existence of angels, but revelations as to 
their nature, their functions, their connection with 



ALL ANGELS. 173 

us. We must not conclude that because they 
have appeared in human form to men, therefore 
they were once men. They are obliged to take 
that form when visible to us, because any other 
form is repulsive and would only shock us. Two 
or three times in Scripture spiritual beings are 
described to us with animal parts ; head of an ox, 
six wings, eyes within and without, and we can 
make nothing of such descriptions. Angels have 
their own form, but we do not know what it is ; 
nor could our mortal eyes probably bear to look 
upon it. 

It is very absurd to have children sing, "I want 
to be an angel," for we men want to be raised 
from the dead with the spiritual body which 
belongs to glorified humanity, and in the next 
world we want to be glorified men and women. 
Our dear Lord did not "take on Himself the 
nature of angels," but the nature of men; and we 
are His brethren, and we want to be, as Scripture 
says, "like Him." 

And now let us see what the Holy Scriptures 
tell us about angels. I will not give texts, for they 
would take up too much room ; but I will try not 
to state anything for which there is not Scripture 
warrant. While angels are not men, the difference 
between them and us is not one of kind, but one 
of degree. They are not hampered with flesh as 
we are, but they possess the same attributes that 
we do, truth, faith, love, etc. As they are created 
beings their nature is finite, and therefore subject 
to temptation; and it is distinctly told us that 



174 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

angels have fallen before temptation, have "left 
their first estate" and are now "angels of the 
devil." Nothing is told us as to how they fell; and 
all the common notions about that, and much else 
about angels, come from Milton's "Paradise 
Lost," a book that has greatly confused and 
corrupted our ideas of the whole unseen world. 
You must take care to separate between its imagin- 
ings and the guarded statements of Scripture. Not 
much is said in the Bible about the office of the 
angels in the heavenly world. It seems to be one 
of perpetual adoration and praise of God ; and 
painters have loved to picture their glorious ranks 
with white wings waving, and beautiful faces 
aglow with reverence. It is all right to think of 
the great angelic company in this way, but remem- 
ber it is imagination, not doctrine. 

Very clear statements are made in Scripture 
regarding the connection of angels with nature; 
not the manner of the connection is told us, but 
the simple fact. We read of an angel who has 
power over fire, and of others who hold the winds 
of the earth. An angel's descent caused the earth- 
quake at our Lord's tomb ; an angel smites Herod 
and annihilates the armies of Assyria; and one 
was seen by David with outstretched hands poised 
over Jerusalem, ready to send in the plague if so 
commanded. The rabbis carried this idea to the 
most absurd lengths, and taught that every dis- 
ease had its angel; but I have stated only the 
words of the Bible about the link between the 
spirits of the air and the world of nature. It is in 



ALL ANGELS. 175 

the connection of angels with men that we are 
chiefly interested, and both Old and New Testa- 
ments have much to say about that. Often did 
they guide Abraham and Jacob and Lot and other 
patriarchs ; and you will remember how the eyes 
of Elisha's servant were opened, so that he saw a 
whole array of them camping around the little 
town where his master dwelt. They announced 
the birth of Christ ; when He was hungry after 
His temptation they came and gave Him food; and 
they did the same in the garden at the agony. 
They told men of His resurrection and ascension. 
It is expressly said that angels are all " ministering 
spirits sent forth from God to do service for us 
who are heirs of salvation;" and from these words 
and from our Lord's own statement, that the 
angels of children stand very near God's throne, it 
has always been a pious belief in the Church that 
every person has his own guardian spirit. The 
Church of Rome makes this a doctrine ; our Church 
does not, but she thoroughly allows the belief, and 
it has been and is held by her most spiritually 
minded children. Our Church teaches in the Collect 
for All Angels' Day, that angels " succor and defend 
us on earth ;" and in the Sanctus, when we say at 
every Communion, "with angels and archangels 
and all the glorious company of heaven we laud 
and magnify Thy glorious name," she teaches us 
that a great company of spirits invisible is present 
and worshipping with us. When we are penitent, 
angels rejoice over us, and when we die, angels 
carry us, as they carried Lazarus, into Paradise. 



176 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

Angels also are to take a great part in the judg- 
ment. We are forbidden expressly to worship 
them, but we ought to think much about them 
and bless God for their aid and sympathy. Men 
may desert us, but Christ and the holy angels 
never will. 



ST. SIMON AND ST. JUDE. 

THE 28th of October is the festival of St. Simon 
and St. Jude. Who was Simon and who was 
Jude, and why are they put together ? There were 
two Simons among the twelve Apostles; Simon 
Peter, and this Simon who is generally distin- 
guished by the title, "the Cananite," or " Zelotes." 
Our Bible spells the word, " Canaanite," which 
would lead one to think that it means he came 
from Canaan; but the revised version more cor- 
rectly spells it "Cananite," and then a scholar 
knows immediately that it is the same word as 
"Zelotes," one being the Chaldee, and the other, 
the Greek, for "Zealot ; " and showing that Simon 
was a member of the sect of Zealots, a Jewish sect 
in our Lord's time, noted for its fanatical 
patriotism. 

There are half a dozen Simons, you will remem- 
ber, in the New Testament, besides these two 
Apostles: Simon Magus, Simon the Tanner, 
Simon the Leper, Simon of Cyrene, Simon, the 
father of Judas Iscariot, and Simon the Pharisee. 
I was well aware of all the difficulties (too long to 
discuss here) about his family and his relation to 



178 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

our Lord, but it seems quite probable that he was 
the son of Alphaeus or Cleopas (the same man), and 
our Lord's cousin. We do not know one single 
thing about him from Scripture, except that he 
belonged to the Zealots, and they were all fanatics. 
It shows how our Lord used all kinds of men. We 
often laugh at fanatics, but a great deal of the fine 
work of the world has been done by them. If it 
had not been for fanatics, this would still be aland 
of slavery, nor would the frightful evil of drink 
ever have been so impressed on the public mind. A 
fanatic, trained as Simon was by our Lord, must 
have been a wonderfully ardent, enthusiastic man 
who had the courage of his convictions. A fanatic 
who has learned some wisdom is one of the most 
valuable helpers you can have in any cause. 

There were also two Judes or Judases among 
the Apostles : the infamous Judas Iscariot, and this 
one who had two other names, Lebbaeus and 
Thaddseus ; Lebbaeus probably referring to Lebba, 
the town of his birth, and Thaddaeus only another 
form of Judas, both coming from the same Hebrew 
word, "to praise." There is very little probability 
that this Judas was the one who wrote the Epistle 
of St. Jude. Of that Jude we know very little, 
except that he was the brother of James, the Bishop 
of Jerusalem, and perhaps our Lord's cousin. The 
word "brother" was used among the Jews, as 
it is now in Eastern communities, to denote a far 
wider relationship — cousins and brothers-in-law, 
and nephews. You will see the phrase in Scripture, 
"our Lord's brother," and you are at liberty, if 



ST. SIMON AND ST. JUDE. 179 

you choose, to think that these were actual broth- 
ers of our dear Lord ; but the whole Church has 
always piously thought that the Blessed Virgin had 
but one child, and that these were cousins, the sons 
of the Virgin's sister, or nephews of Joseph. It is 
perfectly justifiable to think this, and suits our 
feelings better. 

The reason why St. Simon and St. Jude are put 
together is perhaps the idea, even now held by 
many, that they were both sons of Alphaeus, and 
therefore as brothers should go together; but that 
reason would not apply to SS. Philip and James, 
who are also put together on one day. A perfectly 
satisfactory reason is that these two cases of two 
Apostles together were so arranged on purpose to 
recall to us the fact that they were sent out, two 
and two, for the great work of preaching the 
Gospel. How lonely they would have been other- 
wise. How considerate of our Lord thus to plan 
it. Missions ought ever to be conducted in the 
same way, incommunit}^ several together, whether 
men or women. The modern plan of sending 
families has never appealed very strongly to the 
writer of this paper. He thinks the preachers of 
the cross in heathen lands should entirely give up 
all American ideas of life; and in dress, in food, in 
habits, in houses, conform to the people among 
whom they are to live. They might be most 
unpleasant, and utterly preclude the taking of 
families, but in his opinion it would be much more 
effective. It must have gone against the grain for 
the earlv missionaries from Rome to leave all the 



180 * FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

elegancies of Roman life and go out among the bar- 
barian tribes in Gaul and Germany, and live as 
they did ; but the love of Christ constrained them 
to do it, and so they made those wonderful conver- 
sions. I recognize the noble and devoted work of 
our missionaries; it is only a question with me 
whether we are -working in the best way. 

To come back to SS. Simon and Jude, as I said, 
we know nothing of either, but their names. Here 
are two men who took leading parts in the first 
preaching of the Gospel, men who were chosen for 
the best reasons out of other men, by our Lord 
Himself; and yet they are plunged in perfect obscur- 
ity, while we know even the baby words of fourth 
and fifth-rate generals and base-ball players. Nor 
are their cases peculiar. Newman says in one of 
his sermons that we do not know who first planted 
corn, or who first tamed a horse; and yet what 
two things have more greatly benefitted man? 
Who first imagined that the downy seed substance 
of a certain plant could be woven into clothes ? And 
yet that idea revolutionized dress, and was so pro- 
lific a one, that the whole world, if his name were 
known, would set apart a day to his memory. 
How this shows that not those about whom 
trumpets are blown and volumes written, are the 
greatest benefactors of their race; that often in 
secret and silence, as God works, are the most 
tremendous results accomplished. However, fame, 
in the great majority of cases, soon passes; but 
these names are written forever in the book of 
God. What matter if human history ignores them? 



ALL SAINTS' DAY. 

ALL Saints' Day, Nov. 1st, is one of the most 
glorious festivals in the Church year. Next 
to the four great feasts, it has always come the 
closest to my heart. It came into prominence in 
the Western Church about the beginning of the 
7th century, when Pope Boniface IV. conceived the 
grand idea of turning the Pantheon, a noble build- 
ing still standing in Rome, built in honor of all the 
heathen gods, into a Christian church, consecrated 
to the honor of all the Christian saints, the Blessed 
Virgin at the head. He set apart Nov. 1st as a 
day for their especial commemoration ; and never 
from that time in that church have they ceased to 
be honored, and the influence of that festival has 
spread over the whole Western Church. The East- 
ern Church observes the same thing on a different 
day. 

The word "saint" has changed its meaning 
several times. In the New Testament, generally, it 
merely means the whole body of Christians, good 
and bad together. St. Paul writes to the " saints at 
Ephesus," meaning the whole congregation; and 



182 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

we read of " collections for the saints" and of 
" saluting the saints." Then in Revelation St. 
John evidently means by the word, the martyrs, 
and in that sense he calls Jesus "King of the 
saints." This was the meaning long attached to 
the word in the Church, but gradually it became 
the designation of every person remarkable for 
holiness, no matter whether he had suffered mar- 
tyrdom or not ; and it is in that sense we alwa} r s 
use the word now. We mean by " saint " a person 
of such spirituality, such unselfishness, such pure 
and holy life, that he or she stands out pre-eminent 
from the crowd of the ordinary servants of God. 

The Church of Rome has a process for making 
saints, and formally putting them in the kalendar ; 
but it is too long to describe here. Our Church has 
no such form, but it would not be a bad idea to 
have it declared by some authorized body that on 
account of the eminent usefulness and holiness of 
such a man or woman, it was allowable to com- 
memorate those on a certain fixed day. We have 
days to keep in memory of Washington and Lin- 
coln ; there is no reason why we should not have 
days to freshen the recollections of some of our 
eminent Church people whose works and whose 
example have been an inspiration to thousands, 
both in their lives and after their deaths. We will 
probably come to that. We are not at all likely to 
fall into the common Roman error of forgetting 
our Lord in a devotion to some favorite saint. 
Any one who has travelled much abroad must have 
noticed that, whatever Roman writers mav say in 



ALL saints' day. 183 

regard to their teaching as against any such doc- 
trine, the practice of the common people is surely 
in that direction. 

It is a glorious picture, that which opens before 
us when we think of the great army of the saints, 
and it is such a comforting thought. You see so 
mam' half-and-half Christians, so many eaten up 
with selfishness, so many falling by the way, so 
much falseness and sin staining the Church every- 
where, that it does oneimmense good to turn away 
from it all, and think of the thousands on thou- 
sands now at rest who lived in this same Church 
such lives of holiness, devotion to others, sublime 
faith, dauntless courage, that men agreed without 
a word of dissent to call them saints. Out of the 
Church constantly that array is reinforced; and 
whatever you may, on superficial grounds, think 
of the Church, it has ever been and is now, the 
nursery of the highest virtues. If the Church could 
show such products all along the ages, why not 
now ? Surely she is a thousand times purer than 
she was some centuries ago, and yet never did 
saints fail even in her darkest days. It is just so 
now; everywhere and in every village there are 
choice souls all on fire with love to God, all 
absorbed in the good of men, who are getting 
ready for sainthood. They do not think so, for 
they are not pluming themselves on their holiness, 
but are constantly bewailing their imperfections ; 
but God knows who they are, and their own Lord 
is getting their places ready. They are the salt of 
the Church and of the earth. 



184 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

But you will say : "I never can be one." Why 
not ? The saints were of the same clay that you 
are. They had the same passions you have, and 
when we look into their lives we find that they 
fell into the same mistakes and sins which marked 
other people. They were no peculiar creations, 
but they made the object of their lives the service 
of God and of their fellow-men; and gradually 
that intense passion swallowed up their lower 
natures and took possession of their lives, so 
that they only lived for that. It is possible, 
if you have the courage, and will prayerfully 
stick to the struggle, for you to do the same. 
The saints were from all stations of life; some were 
kings and queens, St. Elizabeth, St. Louis, St. 
Margaret; some were soldiers, St. Alban, St. 
Martin, St. Sebastian; some were sweet young 
girls, St. Lucy, St. Cecilia ; some were Bishops, 
Chrysostom, Cyprian; some were servants, like 
the English Sarah Martin, or the French woman 
who founded the Little Sisters of the Poor. 
It makes no difference to God, for holiness is a 
great republic. I do not allow myself on All 
Saints' Day to include in my thanksgiving only the 
saints who were in the Church. I thank God then 
for every good, and true, and unselfish life, in every 
creed, and in spite of the errors of that creed. Poor 
must your lineage be, if you can remember none of 
3^our own name and your own blood. 



HOW TO ENJOY RICHES. 

I AM going to ask the question : " Do you know 
how to be rich?" You need not burst into 
inextinguishable laughter and cry, "Any fool 
would know that." Any fool might, but you are 
not confessedly a fool, and the question is worth 
your consideration. 

A very rich man said to me once: "I do not 
really know how to be rich and enjoy my riches. 
I was brought up in a very plain way, and had to 
look, for many years, long at a sixpence before I 
spent it, and I cannot get used to pa}dng out 
money for a thousand things which I see other 
rich people find necessary and pleasant. It seems 
wasteful and extravagant to me. Nor can I 
accustom myself to very liberal giving. I do not 
wish to be mean, but it seems to me as if I would 
be doing wrong to give away as much as I see 
people doing who are not as rich as I am. I do 
not understand it, and to do the like would be to 
me positively painful and unnatural." 

Now, the man who said this was a most excellent 
and worthy man ; and whilel pitied him as I would 



186 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

pity a blind man living amid lovely sights, I felt 
the truth of what he said, and that a certain 
education, a certain training, was really necessary 
to enable a rich man thoroughly to enjoy his 
riches. A lesson easily learned, you say ; but how- 
ever that may be, I notice that a good many rich 
men do not learn it. There is nothing wrong in 
riches, and whenever you hear a preacher say so, 
just whisper to yourself: " Nonsense, he would 
grab at riches in a moment, if he had the chance." 
It is the fashion now to abuse rich men and nag 
at them, and it makes many who are rich afraid of 
making any display ; but comfort yourselves with 
the thought that it is righteous and just and 
proper that you should have all the comforts and 
luxuries your riches can procure you, so long as 
they are not demoralizing luxuries. Extravagance 
is a relative term, just like econonry. Their mean- 
ing depends on the man to whom they are applied. 
It would be mean in a millionaire to haggle about 
some little expense, or to save his candle ends ; it 
would be extravagant in a poor man not to do so ; 
for if he did not, he would be apt to fall into 
debt. A man has the right to live according to his 
means ; nay more, if you have a good income, it is 
your duty to live well. It helps trade ; it makes 
life more comfortable; it broadens your own views 
of life, and puts you above those belittling and 
depressing cheese-parings which poverty often 
entails. I really do not know any material bless- 
ing for which a man ought to be more truly 
thankful, than the feeling that he has an income 



HOW TO ENJOY RICHES. 187 

sufficient to make both ends meet without pinching 
and stretching. Enjoy life then in a comfortable, 
happy way, without any compunctions of con- 
science, if you are rich enough to do so ; though if 
you have the temperament and the Christian 
philosophy you will be surprised how much enjoy- 
ment you can get out of very little. 

One great good you can get out of riches is to 
show hospitality with them. Dinner parties and 
pleasant recreations for those in your station of 
life are all right and perfectly consistent, but do 
more than this. I know a rich woman who lives 
and entertains according to her fortune ; but every 
week her carriage goes to take some hospital 
nurses out riding ; or some tired sewing girls are 
sent to see a good play ; or some old women in an 
institution are invited to tea ; or some young men, 
lonely in the great city, are asked to come to a 
Sunday dinner. I do not know anybody who 
enjoys a fortune more, or who makes more people 
enjoy it with her. You can do the same; and 
believe me, it brings a great deal more happiness 
than sticking big diamonds in \ r our ears, or sewing 
lace, at one hundred dollars a yard, on your 
frocks. 

Riches enable you to travel, to hearagood talk, 
to buy good pictures, to enjoy good music, and, 
in fact, to employ a hundred ways of softening 
your character and enlarging } r our mind ; but do 
all this with somebody who cannot afford it, for 
that will make your own enjoyment infinitely 
greater. I do not believe 3^ou can get any good at 



188 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

all out of riches unless you part with them. What 
fun can there be in just counting over your bank 
account and making a new list of your invest- 
ments? The world is full of good causes that 
need help; and if you will only take time and study 
the subject (and there is no more delightful study), 
really finding out where your money is to go, and 
what a little timely supply will advance, you will 
be the happiest man in the world. There is no 
keener delight than the feeling that you are helping 
on a noble work ; but just sending a check will not 
give you that delight. You must know about it, 
and interest yourself in it. 

One annoyance all rich men have to bear, and 
that is, the conclusion arrived at by the people 
who know your affairs much better than you do 
yourself, that you ought to give more than you do. 
It is so easy to arrange what others ought to give; 
just try to be satisfied with keeping your own 
account right. Never give one cent which your 
creditors ought to have, for that is immoral. 



JUGGLING WITH THE BIBLE. 

YOU can prove anything you like from the Bible, 
if you are only smart enough to know how 
to juggle with words. There never was a queer 
sect, or heresy, or fad which could not pick 
you out a fine lot of texts to substantiate its dog- 
mas. Tobacco was not discovered until mam r 
centuries after Christ; and yet there is a crank con- 
stantly publishing tracts against it, full of texts 
to prove the terrible wickedness of smoking and 
how sure of eternal punishment it is. I once went 
with a clerical friend to a Quaker funeral. There 
was an address, and the speaker wanted to air the 
peculiar Quaker views against the sacraments, so he 
said : "St. Paul hated Baptism, did he not say, ' I 
thank God I baptized none of you V " This was a 
little too much, and my friend who was burly and 
big-voiced, roared out so loudly that he could be 
heard all over the cemetery, the rest of the verse, 
"except Crispusand Gaius, and I baptized also the 
household of Stephanas." This threw a coldness 
over the ceremon3 r , but that way of quoting Scrip- 
ture still goes on. I heard in my own chapel a 



190 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

priest who believes there are just seven sacra- 
ments, gets them all out of the Lord's Prayer, 
though the most of us think it rather a stretch of 
interpretation even to make " Give us this day our 
daily bread" refer to one of the two our Church 
teaches as ordinarily necessary to the being in a 
state of salvation. The seven waterpots at the 
marriage of Cana have also been made to mean 
the seven sacraments ; and the two swords which 
the Apostles had among them at the Last Supper 
were made to do duty for centuries as proving that 
both the spiritual and temporal power belonged 
to the Pope as head of the Church. A priest, not 
a hundred miles away, was asked once by a woman 
why it was necessary that all the consecrated wine 
should be consumed at the altar ; and he told her 
the Scriptures said : "Drink ye all of this." 

Now this way of treating God's word has done 
immense harm. It is just making the Holy Bible 
like those boxes of letters used for a well-known 
game. You pick out the letters you want and 
spell words with them. No doctrine ought even to 
be put to proof on simple texts sifted out here and 
there, and strung together without any regard to 
the context. You will often hear a man called a 
wonderful Bible preacher when all that he does is 
to make you up a mosaic of texts, many of which 
have not the slightest reference to the doctrine 
before him. Because a verse has the word " faith " 
in it is no proof that it teaches the doctrine of 
justification by faith, or illustrates that in any 
wa3>\ I have heard sermons which did not have 



JUGGLING WITH THE BIBLE. 191 

one word of Scripture in them, except the text ; and 
yet which brought out the power and the spirit of 
God's word better than if they had been paved 
with texts. 

When you want to clinch a doctrine with a text 
you must take one about the meaning of which 
there cannot be any logical controversy. For 
example, " In the beginning was the Word, and the 
Word was with God, and the Word was God." 
Now nothing but the most prejudiced and dis- 
torted reasoning can make that mean anything 
else than a clear statement of the divinity of 
Christ ; but it is not so with that text from Genesis 
so often used in proof of the Trinity, " Let us make 
man in our image." That will not hold water for 
a moment. You cannot prove that there is no 
change in the condition of a soul after death from 
the text, "as the tree falleth so shall it lie;" for 
when you look into the context you see that it has 
no reference whatever to that subject. Then you 
must be sure that the original is rightly trans- 
lated. Not watching this has been a fruitless 
source of pointless quotations. The Revised Ver- 
sion knocked the bottom out of many chosen ves- 
sels of texts which preacher after preacher had 
used as proofs incontestable of divers doctrines. 
Remember the devil quoted Scripture, and our 
Lord in His replies put His divine condemnation 
on that style of exegesis. The devil's children 
have quoted it many a time since. 

As a well-known writer has said: " Tyranny 
has engraved texts upon her sword, oppression 



192 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

has carved texts upon her fetters, cruelty has 
tied texts around her fagots, ignorance has set 
knowledge at defiance with texts wo ven on her flag, 
gin-drinking has been defended out of Timothy, 
and slavery has made a stronghold out of 
Philemon." It would be impossible to tell how 
many pious souls have been kept from Holy Com- 
munion by that obsolete and misguiding transla- 
tion, "he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, 
eateth and drinketh damnation to himself." The 
word "damnation" has totally changed its mean- 
ing, like many other English words. It meant 
originally, condemnation, blame, but it now means 
future punishment. The same remarks will apply 
to the word "hell," which in three cases out of 
four in the Bible means the grave, not the place of 
punishment. Any tinker thinks he can quote the 
Bible glibly, but these few remarks will show with 
what care, what reverence, what study, text quot- 
ing ought to be approached. 



WHY IS THERE EVIL IN THE WORLD? 

THERE is no question about which people 
worry so much as the one: "Why is there 
evil in the world ? Why could not God have made 
the world good ? " This worry is not confined at 
all to Christian people; but all over the world, in 
every creed, and in the past as well as in the 
present, this question has occupied the mind. 
There probably never was a child who did not ask 
its mother why God made the devil. There is one 
very convenient theory, extensively held in old 
times, and even by some philosophers now ; that 
there are two great first principles, one the creator 
of good, and the other the creator of evil; that 
these two are eternally fighting for victory, and 
that in the end the creator of good will triumph. 
Christians, however, must abhor such a doctrine. 
There can be only one Creator, only one Supreme 
Being. God and the devil are not equal, one is the 
creature of the other. Whatever power evil has, is 
either necessary from the constitution of things, 
or permitted, until its errand is accomplished. 

But after you have said that, the old, old ques- 
tion will come up. If God be greater than evil, He 



194 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

must allow it to be here; why does He do that? 
Why is it not impossible for us to do evil ? Now 
the whole mystery of evil is far beyond my power 
to solve. It is the rock against which all philoso- 
phy has ever dashed itself in vain ; but for all that 
there are good, common sense answers to the ques- 
tions I have stated, which may relieve many minds, 
and show very plainly why there is evil in the 
world, and why we are not all good children. 
Suppose God had made everybody so that it 
would be impossible to be bad. I do not think it 
in His power to do that, but just for the moment 
I will grant that He could, what would we then 
all be? Why, just machines. A steam engine has 
to do one way. It has no choice. Its cranks and 
wheels and pistons are put together to act just so; 
and unless it break down, it has got to act that 
way. Animals are practically the same. They 
live in a prescribed way, and they cannot live in 
any other way. The}' never reason that it is 
wrong to sting and claw and choke their neigh- 
bors. They have no moral sense. We do not 
blame snakes for poisoning people. No one would 
arrest a snake and try it, and put it into jail. We 
all say : Snakes cannot help doing so, they are 
incapable of sinning. But do you not see, they are 
also incapable of doing good? The}" cannot, 
because they have no free- wills, do acts of 
humanity, of generosit}', of self-sacrifice. The two 
things go together. If you are capable of doing 
good, you must be capable of doing evil. If you 



WHY IS THERE EVIL IN THE WORLD? 195 

cannot do evil, you cannot do good. This conies 
of necessity from free-will. 

God wished to surround Himself with creatures 
who could give up self, who could resist tempta- 
tion, who could give Him voluntary obedience; 
and to do that, He had to give such creatures free- 
will. He did not want servants who had to obey 
whether they would or no. You can judge from 
your own feelings, for you are made in God's 
image. What pleasure would there be to you in 
the company of men who were like a box of 
tin soldiers? Where they were set up they 
had to stay. They have no will. They cannot 
change. You want companions who can of their 
own choice love you, help you, give up their wills 
for yours. Much more then must God like that, so 
He made us free to do evil as well as to do good. 
If you cannot possibly do evil, you are not free, 
you are a machine, you are a tin soldier. If you 
are put in a box, you sta3^ there; if you are bent 
you cannot straighten yourself. You have no 
merit in keeping straight and you deserve no 
praise for keeping your place. Do you not see that 
to be men as we are, with a power of choice, we 
must have the power to choose evil ? 

But could not God have made us with wills 
which would never will evil ? No, He could not, 
and have us men ; for the very word " will "implies 
the abilit} r to choose one of two courses. Remem- 
ber, there are things God cannot do. When we say 
He can do all things, we mean all possible things. 
God cannot make square round, nor two and 



196 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

two three, nor good evil ; nor is it in His power to 
make such a thing as a man without the possibility 
of that man choosing wrong. It was a dead 
certainty when God created spirits and men with 
the power of choice that some among them would 
choose to disobey. They did choose that way, and 
evil came into the world. 

But could not God have shielded us from 
temptation? Well, He could, just as you could 
keep a man out of mischief by chaining him to a 
post ; but you keep him then out of good at the 
same time ; he cannot do harm, but neither can he 
do good. If we were to have the power of grow- 
ing better, of rising higher, of progress, of glorious 
self-sacrifice, we had to have the power of refusing 
to do all this. Do you not think that God made 
just as perfect a man as He could and give him 
free-will, and do you think this reasoning accounts 
sufficiently for evil spirits and evil men ? Do not 
say " free-will then was a bad thing to give us." 
Why, our free-will has enabled us to do all the 
splendid things we have done; achievements in art, 
in culture, in civilization, in moral excellence, in 
devotion. We would just be like tigers and apes 
without it. We must take the risks of the evil 
that comes with it, just as with the glorious sun 
we take the risks of sunstroke, and drought, and 
putrefaction. 



FOR FOURTH OF JULY. 

LET us think a little of our relations to our 
country as Christian men and women. It is 
too often the case that Churchmen forget alto- 
gether that patriotism is a Christian virtue, and 
that the duties to the State are insisted upon by 
the writers of the New Testament with quite as 
much force as any other duties. We seem to think 
that a class of persons called politicians are to 
attend to the State, just as tailors attend to our 
clothes, and tinkers to our tinware; that these 
people know all about that business and we can 
leave it in their hands. The results have been 
most fearful — corruption, bribery, wild extrava- 
gance, foolish laws — simply because people without 
principle have had the management of such things. 
Now, I contend that it is not only a silly and a 
very costly mistake in Churchmen to let politics 
alone, but it is really a sin; a sin because it is 
selfish and ignores the good of the community, 
and considers not our neighbor. Just according 
to our influence, and our position, and our endow- 
ments, will God hold us responsible for having 



198 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

neglected our duties to the State. In some coun- 
tries, in Turkey, for example, men might be excus- 
able for letting the State entirely alone. They 
might say: "We are not consulted about the 
officials and the law-makers, and so we will not 
meddle with them, but thank the Lord when they 
are tolerably decent, get along the best we can 
when they are rogues, and when things get too 
bad, try a riot and a revolution." We cannot 
give this excuse, for God has put in our hands a 
tremendous power. We can, by a little piece of 
paper called a ballot, decide directly who shall 
occupy almost every office in this land, and 
indirectly every office, for we can choose those 
who are to appoint to other offices. This power 
is not restricted to a few of us. The poorest man 
has it as well as the richest. The black man wields 
it as well as the white, the illiterate are endowed 
with it as well as the college professors. I am 
rather doubtful about the wisdom of this universal 
suffrage, but that has nothing to do with it ; we 
have it, and we are responsible for it. Since we 
and we alone decide who are to make and carry 
out the laws, we and we alone will be held respon- 
sible by God for the sort of men we choose. Even 
if we are deceived in men, as is very likely to be 
the case, the elections occur so often that we need 
not have to endure them a great while; we can 
put others in their places. Never before on such a 
scale as this, has power been put in the hands of all 
men. There are no privileged classes in a political 
sense. The whole population is before us to 



FOR FOURTH OF JULY. 199 

choose, and eligibility to office is almost as exten- 
sive as the number of electors. 

I am often amazed to see how lightly we esteem 
this awful power; a power greater in its conse- 
quences and its possibilities than electricity or 
steam. One of the worst features about this is 
that as we grow better informed and more pros- 
perous, and attain higher social position, the less 
we seem to care about using our voting privilege. 
Englishmen are so dinerent; the greatest nobles 
and the whole leisured class take an active interest 
in politics, and give a great deal of attention to 
them. I think our upper classes are improving, 
but the case is bad enough, and causes the most 
serious alarm among thinking men. Do not say 
that you belong to a party and must vote with 
that. You are a free man. You can vote as you 
please, and if your party is tr\4ng to carry an 
iniquitous measure, you are put in no danger, 
unless you are an office holder, by leaving it. Even 
if you were, duty to country is above mere self- 
ish interest ; it is one of the most sacred duties in 
the world. 

Now, I call upon you as Churchmen, as servants 
of Christ, as under the Spirit, the author of true 
liberty, to consider carefully the character of the 
people who are to make the laws, and for whom 
you are to vote. I do not ask that they shall be 
Churchmen, but that they shall be honest and 
clean. I would infinitely rather have a true- 
hearted secularist for alderman of my ward, than 
a dishonest and sneaking Churchman. What we 



200 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

want are men who fear God and who keep His 
commandments; who could no more be bribed 
than the Washington monument, and whom no 
newspaper could intimidate. They do not need to 
be college bred, or the owners of fine houses, if they 
have good, honest common sense, and have the 
welfare of the community and not their own 
pockets in consideration. Do not say that such 
men are too hard to find. Honest men, thank 
God, are in the ascendant, for if they were not, 
utter confusion would cover all our business. It 
may be hard to induce such men to take office ; but 
that is because the sense of the duty of citizenship 
is so dull and dormant. By the press and by the 
pulpit a public opinion must be created which will 
really force men who can be useful to make the 
sacrifice of some of their time for the benefit of 
their city, or their country, or their State; and 
they ought to be compensated for any loss they 
may have to sustain in doing so. You certainly 
can exercise as much care in choosing an alderman, 
etc., as you would in choosing a business partner, 
or an administrator for your estate. You cannot 
shove this off on any Kaiser, grand duke, or high 
mightiness. In the Providence of God it has been 
put upon you ; and the way you have attended to 
it will come in with all the rest of your life at the 
judgment, and form a more important part of it 
than you seem to think. 



WHY DO THE INNOCENT HAVE TO SUFFER? 

IN answer to the question, "Why God permits 
evil in the world," I know very well people will 
say : " Your answer may be a good one, but why 
do innocent people have to undergo all this pain 
and suffering ? " " People who do not choose evil, 
why do they have to suffer evil? Take children, 
innocent women, good and noble men, and all the 
brute creation who have no power of choice ; why 
do they often have to undergo such agonies and 
bear so much unmerited suffering?" 

Now just as in the " Origin of Evil, "so in "Pain 
and Sorrow" there are great depths which the 
keenest intellect has never been able to fathom ; but 
if some reasons for the good of suffering can be 
shown, does it not prove pretty clearly that if we 
knew enough, other reasons would come to light? 
that the darkness on the subject comes from our 
not having eyes keen enough to pierce it ? Let me 
see whether I cannot give some well-founded 
answers to the query : " Why do the innocent have 
to suffer?" 

In the first place, pain is the best thing in the 
world to keep us from greater pain. Unless pain 



202 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

attached to certain acts we would all die before 
our time. If a burnt child did not dread the fire, 
why, it would run into the fire the next chance it 
got, and perish. The pain keeps it away, and 
saves it. If I did not get a pain in my stomach 
from eating wrong food, I would be eating some- 
thing very bad for me all the time ; and very soon 
my body would become poisoned, and I would die. 
Every one soon gets to know that pain is a signal 
for the stopping of certain things ; so in that way 
pain is one of our best friends. 

Then again, if you will run over in your memory 
the lives of men and women who have been of 
much use in the world, and are much known, you 
will probably find that they are people who have 
had to suffer a great deal, and that suffering has 
made them greatly what they are. Take Dante ; 
his life was one of great sorrow and trial, and it 
gave him an insight into life that nothing else 
could have done. Suffering develops patience, 
cheerfulness, unselfishness. I know you will say that 
it does not always act in that way, that it some- 
times hardens people, and makes them very bitter. 
That is true; but you can say of the fire which 
warms you and cooks your food, that it can 
destroy your property and burn up your child; 
that, however, does not controvert the truth that 
fire is a great blessing. That a good thing is some- 
times perverted to a bad purpose is no proof 
against its being a good thing. Our free will is 
responsible for that. 



WHY DO THE INNOCENT HAVE TO SUFFER? 203 

Then, again, pain and suffering make us a great 
deal more pitiful and sympathetic. There is an old 
Latin line which put in English reads: " Not 
ignorant of suffering, I know how to succor 
others," and nothing could be truer. If you want 
S3^mpathy you will not find it in some boy who 
knows nothing about life, but in some one who has 
buffeted its waves and tasted its bitter cups. He 
can enter into your feelings and do you good. 
Again, I do not believe there ever was developed 
any very strong, self-reliant character, without 
suffering. People born with silver spoons in their 
mouths sometimes amount to something, but it is 
the exception. It takes adversity, it takes struggle, 
to make a man evolve his best gifts, and rise to 
his best usefulness. Darwin says somewhere that 
he is sure he would not have done half the work he 
did, if he had not been so troubled with ill health. 

But the question will be pressed : Why do so 
many innocent people have to suffer, as for exam- 
ple, those destroyed by floods or earthquakes, or 
cholera ? Why do mothers have to undergo the 
agony of seeing their little innocent children taken 
from them before they can speak ? Now all nature 
is under great laws, the winds, the waves, the 
germs. Certain causes will produce certain effects. 
Our experience teaches us this, and we feel that 
unless this were so, unless we could always rely on 
fire producing heat, and seeds planted producing 
fruit, life would be perfectly intolerable. If we did 
not know that we were in a kingdom of laws, how 
could we transact business, make promises, engage 



204 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

in undertakings ? Uncertainty about the seasons, 
or the effect of this or that process, would paralyze 
everything. Now if law must prevail, it is per- 
fectly impossible, without a miracle, to prevent its 
often hurting innocent people. If the laws of san- 
itation are so violated that cholera breaks out, 
why, innocent and good people have to die as well 
as evil and guilty. If children or their parents 
violate the laws of health, they must perish, no 
matter how dear they are. 

Do you think that exceptions ought to be made 
in your favor, and that your house in cholera sea- 
sons ought to be marked by God, so that the angel 
of the pestilence would pass over it ? Such a thing 
could not be. If God should break the laws of 
nature for you, He ought to do it for the next per- 
son ; and if He kept breaking it for every case, utter 
confusion would ensue. Just imagine us the vic- 
tims of chance or caprice. Laws are made to pro- 
duce the greatest good to the greatest number ; and 
some have to suffer when they come athwart them. 
Do not let this keep you from prayer. There is a 
law for that as for other things ; and as God har- 
monizes all laws, so He does that, and it works 
just as all other laws work, under His loving care. 



HAVING A TRYING DISPOSITION. 

A WOMAN was lately talking to me about her 
son who, she said, had such a " trying' ' dis- 
position. Let us talk a little about this word 
" trying." What does it mean ? Why, something 
that makes great demands on the patience, the 
temper, the courtesy, the religion, of those who 
have to deal with it. Have you a trying dis- 
position ? Oh, of course not. You know a large 
number of people who have, and you wonder how 
people can live with them, but you are not that 
kind of a person at all. How fortunate ! But as 
you love to give advice, you may get some ideas 
from this paper which you can communicate to the 
people who are trying, and that will "try" them 
a little. 

It does not follow because you are called "try- 
ing," that you are through and through disagree- 
able. A man may be very agreeable in very many 
ways, and in one or two others very trying. 
Indeed, some of the most trying persons I ever 
knew in my life, were really very good, spiritually 
minded, and excellent people. I once knew a man 



206 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

thoroughly well bred, filled with zeal, fervent in 
good works, profoundly religious; and yet there 
was no one who had anything to do with him for 
any time who did not find him trying. He seemed 
never to be able to do anything in the way the 
majority thought right, and there was always 
friction and ruffled feathers. A clergyman told me 
he had a man in his parish respected by every one 
who knew him, an eminent example of holy living, 
devoted to the said clergyman and constantly 
doing favors for him, in fact, his right hand man ; 
and yet the whole parish put together, even count- 
ing the ritualistic old maids, who are perhaps the 
most trying religious things ever created, did not 
worry and fret the clergyman like that man. He 
always was wanting things done which the clergy- 
man knew would be most unwise to do. He would 
often in very small ways show a disposition to 
tyrannize. He would listen often to gossip of the 
rankest character and annoy the clergyman with 
it. He really spoiled his admirable qualities by a 
few disagreeable traits. I have no doubt if you 
had asked him about his rector he would have 
spoken most lovingly about him, but would have 
added confidentially: "He is, you know, some- 
what trying, but I manage to get on with him." 

I think I hear you say : "No one is perfect, we 
are all weak, erring human beings ; and the clergy- 
man of whom you speak ought to have been very 
thankful that he had such a parishioner, and not to 
have bothered about his little imperfections. ' ' Well, 
he was thankful, he loved the man very dearly, but 



HAYING A TRYING DISPOSITION. 207 

that could not blind him to the fact that he could 
have improved himself greatly. We all love trjdng 
people, often very much, and they love us who are 
equally trjdng. 

But because we all have this infirmity, shall we 
fold our hands and say : " Nothing can be done to 
help it. It is just our way and we cannot do any 
other way?" Hot weather is trying, but you 
endeavor to find remedies for it. You wear light 
clothes; you sit in the shade; you avoid exercise 
and excitement. You can palliate, soften, modify, 
turn in another direction, a vast number of very 
annoying things. Surely, it is a Christian's duty 
to labor at getting the motes out of his eyes, motes 
which every one about him will certify to being 
tolerably stout beams. But you reply: "We do 
not know when we are trying, if we did, we might 
work at it." Oh yes, you do. Often and often 
your conscience has whispered to you: " That 
way of talking and acting is not the right way, it 
ought to be changed," but you have given no heed. 
I do not believe that anyone is always thoroughly 
blind to his faults. It must have occurred some- 
times even to the Spanish Philip II. that he was 
hypocritical, selfish, cruel. When you are told by 
some one intimately connected with you that cer- 
tain ways you have are very trying ways, do not 
say to yourself: " Oh, that is just mistaken judg- 
ment," or "What nonsense to make such a fuss 
about trifles." Give the matter very serious con- 
sideration, think over it, pray over it, and, what 
is more, struggle to get the better of it. Wiry, even 



208 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

the most ingrained defects can be overcome by hard 
work with God's implored help. The miser can 
become generous; the hot-tempered, patient; the 
profane, sweet-spoken; the tale-bearer, reticent; 
the censorious, charitable. Such transformations 
have been seen millions of times in the world of 
grace, and in men and women fashioned of the 
same clay you are. Just as in the physical world, 
deaf and blind and crippled men have so artfully 
mastered their weaknesses that they can really 
accomplish more than hearing and seeing men, so 
can you in the moral and spiritual world deal with 
your trying ways until you have really made them 
the ladders on which you may mount to higher 
things. Are you " trying" at the table, finding 
fault with the food, and spoiling all your wife's or 
your mother's meals by making sharp remarks 
about everything they have provided ? Some men 
do that as regularly as they sit down, and seem to 
think sneering at the food as necessary a condi- 
ment as salt and pepper. Nothing can be more 
trying. Have you some little ways of sitting, 
speaking, dressing, which try your husband, but 
which you persist in thinking just fanciful in him 
to fuss about? Anything that annoys others is 
not a trifle ; and even if the fact that others are 
annoyed by it is " trying" to you, so much the 
more should you strive to get rid of it. Trifles 
make up our lives, and any one can bear with more 
composure having an arm cut off in fifteen minutes 
than having pins stuck in it for fifteen years. 



NON-DOCTRINAL SERMONS. 

I NOTICE that an association has been formed to 
supply the public with non-sectarian and non- 
doctrinal sermons. Now to my mind a sermon 
that was non-sectarian and non-doctrinal would 
be worthy of a place in the greatest show on 
earth. I presume "non-sectarian" means a ser- 
mon to which neither Methodist, Baptist, Presby- 
terian, Ethical Culture, Christian Science, Univer- 
salist,nor Unitarian, could object ; a sermon out of 
which has been taken anything that could pos- 
sibly be faulted by any particular division of Chris- 
tians ; a sermon that could be preached in a joss 
house as well as a Church, and would be quite as 
appropriate for the steps of a Japanese temple as 
the pulpit of a modern meeting house. Such a ser- 
mon would be very much like a rice pudding, from 
which had been removed the rice, the sugar, the 
flour, the salt and the eggs. The residuum would 
be nil. The ministers who are to write these ser- 
mons belong to various sects, and honestly profess 
to hold the views of the sect to which they belong, 
and to believe that their sect presents the best pos- 



210 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

sible exposition of Christianity. How can they 
with any consistency set forth sermons which 
utterly ignore the "best possible exposition of 
Christianity?" Is that fair? Is that honest? 
Can they do this without juggling with words ? 
How, for example, could a Baptist or Methodist 
clergyman urge people to follow Christ and walk 
in His way, without alluding to Baptism and the 
Lord's Supper ? And yet these two things are cer- 
tainly sectarian ; for the Salvation Army, the Y. M. 
C. A., the Christian Scientists, the Quakers, and 
many other Christian bodies do not hold these 
things as at all indispensable in the right follow- 
ing of Christ. This association of ministers must 
leave them all out, and yet the sects to which they 
belong teach in their confessions of faith their 
absolute necessity as part of the following of 
Christ. 

But far funnier than the non-sectarian sermon 
would be the non-doctrinal one. How I should 
like to see it ! But alas ! I never can, because it is 
perfectly impossible that it should exist. Remem- 
ber, it is to be a Christian sermon, set forth by 
Christian ministers as an exposition of Christian- 
ity. It must rest on the belief in one God, all just, 
all holy, all powerful, all merciful. Certainly noth- 
ing less than that could express any Christian idea 
of God ; and yet here immediately we have a doc- 
trine over which men have fought and disputed 
and agonized for thousands of years ; but in the 
plan of these sermons disputed doctrines must be 
ignored. I would ask how then, in the name of 



NON-DOCTRINAL SERMONS. 211 

common sense, can you, on these terms, lay even 
the foundations for number one, in the course of 
non-doctrinal sermons ? It is perfectly natural that 
all religious doctrine should cause dispute, because 
religious doctrine is like the doctrine of our family 
life, or the doctrine of our government ; something 
that is woven in with our life, and we naturally 
resent its being disparaged. In times of ignorance 
we resented it with fire and sword, and we still 
are using bad and bitter and intolerant language 
about it. All that was wrong ; but if we have any 
robust faith at all, we must of necessity protest 
boldly, strongly, loudly against those who attack 
it. We would be false to our Captain % Jesus 
Christ, and chicken-livered soldiers of the Cross, if 
we did otherwise. Picture to 3'ourself a sermon 
which did not dare to say for fear of being thought 
doctrinal, that God punished the wicked and 
rewarded the righteous ; or that could only allude 
to Christ in the most general and milk-and-watery 
way for fear of treading on the toes of the doc- 
trines of His nature, His knowledge, His power, 
His remedial work. Would it not be Hamlet with 
Hamlet left out ? Remember that a sermon which 
denies or ignores certain doctrines is just as doc- 
trinal as any other. "I do not believe in the per- 
sonality but in the immanency of God, and I 
believe the Lord Jesus to be human born only, and 
only a great exemplar," is just exactly as much 
of a creed and a doctrinal statement as the Nicene 
Creed. The people who hold such views hold them 
as their creed ; and if they have an organization 



212 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

(and they must have to live) that will be the creed 
of the organization, and these will be the doctrines 
preached. Do you not see that a non-doctrinal 
sermon is as great a monstrosity as a six-legged 
calf? 

But we will be told that the object of this 
course of non-doctrinal sermons will be to teach 
morality. Yes, but what kind of morality ? Turk- 
ish morality? Apache morality? or Christian 
morality? But Christian morality rests on the 
Christian religion, and the Christian religion 
is a series of doctrines concerning Christ and His 
teaching. It cannot be stated without immedi- 
ately involving dogma. It is not conceivable that 
these ministers intend to set forth that modern 
code of morals which boasts itself as entirely free 
from the shackles of Christian opinion, and resting 
entirely upon the natural desires of man. Beyond 
a doubt, they intend strongly to urge every human 
being to repentance, to throw off sin, to seek the 
face of God in pra}rer, to recognize a duty to a 
father as shown in a child-like obedience, and to 
the practising of every virtue because God loves it. 
Their ideal will be the Lord Jesus, and to Him will 
they point their hearers. But all this is Christian 
doctrine; it is the essence of the Christian Creed. 
Christian morality is founded on Christian doc- 
trines, and it is pure moonshine to talk of non- 
doctrinal sermons. 



ROUNDING OFF THE CORNERS. 

I AM going to call this paper " Rounding off the 
Corners," and it was suggested by the follow- 
ing words in the Bishop of New York's Convention 
Address last year : " Our duty to the social fabric, 
yours and mine, is not to pull it down, because its 
existence seems to us to involve certain intolerable 
hardships ; but to make these hardships tolerable, 
as even the hardest labor and the sorest privations 
ma}" be made tolerable by an inexhaustible sympa- 
thy, and a never-tiring helpfulness to all within our 
reach." I could not have a better text than these 
words ; let me preach from them. 

We all know how road builders and track 
layers strive to avoid sharp corners ; how thej r try 
not to have sudden twists and hard places to get 
around. Anything angular and stiff and sharp is, 
when possible, put out of the way. Now, life is 
full of sharp corners, and corners which could not 
be made otherwise than sharp. They had to be so, 
and we may try as much as we please to construct 
life without them, but it cannot be done. Yes, our 
socialivStic and anarchistic friends say, and that it 



214 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

is so proves the whole structure of society to be 
wrong, and it ought to be pulled down to the 
ground and built up again without any sharp 
corners . That would be a pretty big j ob , however, 
and it is not likely to be soon done, and we cannot 
wait for it. Besides, it is utterly impracticable to 
tear everything down. It could not be done with- 
out tearing down much that is priceless, and just 
as useful and just as necessary as any new thing 
that could be found. Westminster Abbey is very 
old and rusty and time-eaten ; but nobody thinks 
of tearing it down, but of restoring it, of renewing 
the worn out parts, of propping and strengthening 
the work ; society is very much like that. It will 
be much more profitable to see how we can stop 
leaks, patch walls, put in new pieces here and 
there, than to labor and howl (and it is chiefly 
howling these iconoclasts do) that everything 
must come down and we must have a bran new 
thing. 

The amusing part is that these pullers down 
are all by the ears as to what kind of a building 
ought to go up in place of the present one; and the 
experiments they have hitherto tried have been 
anything but reassuring to plain people. Let us 
recognize the sharp corners, wish with all our 
hearts they were not there; but knowing that we 
cannot help their existence, strive to pad them, try 
to round them off, try to make them as little sharp 
as possible. You have no idea how much can be 
done in this way, by showing, as Bishop Potter 
says, "an inexhaustible sympathy and a never- 



ROUNDING OFF THE CORNERS. 215 

tiring helpfulness to all within our reach." Remem- 
ber, sharp corners occur in the running of the rich 
as well as the poor ; and quite as many rich people 
as poor fall over them and are hurt, and want 
sympathy as badly as any poor person does. 

I need not give a complete list of the inevitable 
hardships of life, and I mean by that those which 
do not belong to good conduct or misconduct, and 
which may come to the most pious as well as the 
most wicked, and fall upon the most prudent and 
lie in wait for the most careful and blameless. It 
w T ill be sufficient to mention sickness, loss of situa- 
tion from inevitable causes, loss of property 
through the fault of others, unworthy relatives, 
undeserved blame, loss of some limb or faculty by 
which you earned your living, pinching poverty, 
wretched environment from which there is no 
escape, witnessing the prosperity of wickedness 
and the success of the tyrant and the grabber, and 
sorrow in its myriad and perfectly irresistible 
forms. We have to meet these and they cannot be 
got out of life. Riches cannot keep them all off, and 
poverty does not bring them all on. The}' are 
independent of money and rank and learning. 
Now, it is no use to shakeyour fist at these things, 
and wail and rail at the state of things which pro- 
duces them. There they are, and they sa} r , " What 
are 3-ou going to do about it? " Mone}- will help 
some, but it is no more use in many others than 
dead leaves would be. 

There is one thing which will help us all, no 
matter whether the sufferer be rich or poor ; and it 



216 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

is a thing the poorest can have at his disposal just 
as freely as the rich ; and that is sympathy. If we 
can have that, the sharpest corners will lose some 
of their sharpness ; and we can bear, as we never 
thought we could, the rawness of the sores which 
running against them constantly makes. Do not 
put me off by saying, "Oh, sympathy is like a 
taste for music ; some people are born with it and 
others are not ; I was not, and, therefore, I must be 
excused." Nonsense, we are no more born with 
cultivated hearts than we are with cultivated 
minds. Indeed, when we see how cruel children 
are, we sometimes doubt whether sympathy is ever 
natural, but that is only for a moment. We feel 
that there is a natural foundation on which, with 
determined efforts and the help of God, we can 
develop a greater pow T er of sympathy. We have 
to learn to be self-forgetting, to look steadily at 
human life and think about it, and get unto our 
minds how hard it is for some, and to enter into 
their feelings. Our Lord expressed this divineh^ 
when He called it "losing your life for others' 
sake.'' If you want to round off the corners in 
your fellows' lives, you have got to lose your own 
life, to lose the hugging yourself, alwa^^s thinking 
about your own comfort, dwelling on your own 
fancies. You must merge yourself in the life around 
you ; and by reading, by observation, by keeping 
your eyes and heart open, learn to feel for men; not 
theatre feeling, but the feelingthat prompts you to 
do, to say, to plan, to arrange what you possibly 
can to help. If you do not do this, you will suffer 



ROUNDING OFF THE CORNERS. 217 

for it. Tom Hood wrote a poem which pictures a 
woman seeing pass before her a procession of the 
people she might have helped and did not ; and she 
shrieks: "No need of sulphur and of boiling lead 
for my punishment; this crowd is what damns 
mv soul." 



THE PARABLE OF THE UNJUST STEWARD. 

AS I was listening to the Gospel about the unjust 
. steward on the 9th Sunday after Trinity, I 
thought of the pages and pages which have been 
written to explain it. Many a dusty old tome 
hidden away in libraries is full of discussions about 
this story. The steward stood for this, and the 
debtors for that, and the rich man for so and so, 
and it was a great jumble. But is the parable so 
difficult after all ? Has not the difficulty been cre- 
ated, as in so many other places in the Bible, by 
overlooking the very plain meaning on the surface? 
Let us see : 

A rich proprietor, who owned a great deal of 
property, employed, of course, an agent to look 
after it, and to this agent were given of neces- 
sity very full powers . He fixed the rents . He made 
the leases, and in him the greatest confidence was 
placed. The proprietor heard in some way that 
the agent was doing crooked work, and that it 
was not safe to have him longer in charge. He 
made up his mind to dismiss him, notified him that 
he intended to do so, and asked for the accounts 



THE PARABLE OF THE UNJUST STEWARD. 219 

that there might be a final settlement. The agent 
was very much taken aback at being found out, 
and said to himself: " What am I going to do ? I 
have not saved up anything. I cannot turn my 
hand to any menial work, and I certainly am too 
proud to take up begging as a means of support." 
He then, being a very bright fellow, thought out a 
plan b} T which he could make some capital for him- 
self, and provide some resources when he should 
lose his place. He sent for his master's tenants 
and said to one : 

"What rent do you pay ? " 

"I pay a hundred measures of oil a year." 

" Well, now, just alter j-our lease from one hun- 
dred to fifty." 

It was easy to alter the leases, for they were 
written on wax tablets, and with a little skill 
one could easily change figures. This, you see, 
reduced his rent about one-half. Of course the 
tenant was most willing, for he knew the agent 
arranged these things, and he thought him most 
obliging to do this great favor for him. Then 
another tenant was sent for, and told to change 
his rent, which in the lease was put at a hundred 
measures of wheat, to eighty. Probably other 
tenants were similarly favored, and this sharp 
trick made them all very great friends of the agent, 
and ready to do him any good turn they could. 
The agent was found out however, for there is 
always somebody to tell; and while the proprietor 
hated to be cheated, and was probably very angry 
about it, he could not help "commending the 



220 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

unjust steward because he had done wisely." 
That is, he could not help expressing his admira- 
tion for the clever trick, and crying to his friends : 
"What a bright fellow this cheating steward is, 
and how admirably he has feathered his own nest 
at my expense." 

We have all done this. I have been intensely 
angry at having been fooled by some adventurer 
asking for help ; and yet I could not help admiring 
the smartness and the wisdom shown by the 
rogue in fooling me. This is the story our Lord 
told, in the Eastern fashion, to a listening crowd, 
and he proceeded to point a moral from the stew- 
ard's conduct. " How this shows," He says, " the 
superior prudence and quick- wittedness of worldly 
people in managing worldly affairs, so superior to 
that of unworldly people." He does not approve 
of the agent's conduct, that was impossible ; but he 
uses him to show the pains people take and the 
thought they give to bring good results out of 
investments ; and he urges on those who have 
nobler things to manage, some of the same acute- 
ness and the same wisdom. 

Why should not the same keen and strict busi- 
ness principles be applied to managing churches 
and hospitals and colleges, that we see every day 
applied in the world of trade to corporations and 
business concerns? Because you are pious is no 
reason in the world why you should not manage 
your affairs, and otherpeople's affairs entrusted to 
you, as carefully as the most irreligious man would, 
and you will do well in that to imitate him. You 



THE PARABLE OF THE UNJUST STEWARD. 221 

need not imitate his drinking, swearing, lying, and 
loose morality ; but you can imitate his foresight, 
his prudence, his unceasing care and attention. 
Then our Lord draws another lesson from the 
agent's making friends for himself out of his busi- 
ness acquaintance. He advises religious people to 
use their worldly advantages to make themselves 
heavenly friends. Make them, he says, out of your 
money, out of your position, out of your credit, 
out of your talents. Use these to the best advan- 
tage for God and for your fellow men. Do good 
with them. Employ them for noble ends, never 
for purely selfish purposes. Give your money 
in good causes; use your position to help on 
worthy enterprises which need the bolster of a 
well-known name ; lend your credit to a deserving 
friend to whom it will be life. Take your 
talents, whatever they may be, and employ them, 
not wholly for yourself, but also for the glory of 
God. Then "when ye fail," which means "when 
you die," all these good things you have done by 
the help of your worldly riches, all those products 
of 3 r our unselfishness, will "welcome you into 
everlasting habitations," that is, into Paradise; 
will stand around you, will vouch for you, will be 
the grandest body r -guard your enfranchised spirit, 
going to meet its Lord, could have. Is not this a 
simple explanation of the parable ? 

Do not think our Lord's term for money, etc., 
' ' mammon of unrighteousness, ' ' a harsh one. You 
yourself often call it "filthy lucre" and "dirty 



222 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

money," for it is that so often, but it need not be ; 
and, Moodyism and Calvinism to the contrary 
notwithstanding, it can be made, as our Lord says, 
a very cloud of witnesses for you, when, with your 
hand in His, you would enter heaven. 



I.— THE TWELVE HOURS OF THE DAY. 

WHEN our Lord said : " Are there not twelve 
hours in the day?" He spoke a proverb, 
and He meant by day, life, just as we say, " The 
day of Washington or Napoleon.'' He meant all 
the various duties and interests of life, expressed 
by the perfect number twelve, as coming into any 
life to make it a well-rounded one. Have you these 
twelve hours in your life? These are the twelve 
hours: 1, prayer; 2, worship; 3, duties to self; 
4, duties to others; 5, pleasure; 6, business; 7, 
rest; 8, travel; 9, citizenship; 10, study; 11, 
thought ; 12, society ; and I say boldly that any 
day, that is, any life, that has not these twelve 
hours in it, is an imperfect day, a life marred. I do 
not mean that every life has got to have them in 
the same proportions, hours of the same length; 
but that every well-rounded life must have them 
all in, or it is not well-rounded. Let us review the 
dial-plate of our life, and see whether the hour or 
even the minute hand ever points to all the hours. 
And first, pra} r er. Does that regularly and 
every day come into your time? I do not mean 



224 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

just something done from habit and without 
thought. You and I, when we were boys, and 
alas ! often since we have been men, have knelt 
down and dashed off an "Our Father," or "Now 
I lay me," and " God bless my parents," etc., with- 
out any more real interest than if we had been 
repeating the alphabet. That is not prayer, 
though it is much better than no prayer at all ; for 
into that form the substance will sometimes come. 
I do not mean that. I ask you whether some time, 
between your uprising and your lying down, you 
lift your heart up from earth toward your dear 
Lord in heaven, ask Him to help you, ask Him to 
pardon you and to guide your path ? Now, you 
may have all the other eleven things in your day, 
and if you have not this, it is a bad day. It is like 
some dish with costly ingredients with the salt 
forgotten. It is tasteless. 

Second, worship; the public recognition and 
worship of God — Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 
Does this come into your week, we will say, for it 
may not be in your power to have it come into 
your day. You may repty : "I am here in church 
every Sunday." Ah, that is all very well, but 
what do 3 r ou do in church? Do you take a real 
part ? You might go to an election ; it would not 
help your party on much if you did not vote. Do 
you, while you are in church (making allowance 
for the wandering of the mind, which no human 
being can possibly escape entirely in any service), 
do vou enter with heartiness and devotion into 



I.— THE TWELVE HOURS OF THE DAY. 225 

what is going on, into the confessions, the peti- 
tions for this or that need, the thanksgiving for 
mercies, the glorious praise of the majesty of God, 
and the sweet festival of love, when we gather 
around the common table of our Master ? 

Third, duty to self. No man can neglect himself 
for one day without its telling on all the days that 
come after. I do not confine myself to his personal 
appearance, though I do consider that very impor- 
tant, and the calling it vanity most foolish and 
empty. I include, and put in the first rank, the 
care of his temper, his words, his example, his 
actions. We have to watch ourselves every 
moment; for a whole crowd of passions, tenden- 
cies, impulses, stand on tiptoe ready to rush off 
the very moment the guard relaxes his attention. 
If you leave out this care even for twelve hours, 
it piles up work for the next day, which has its 
own burden. 

Fourth, duty to others. I trust you have love in 
your lives. A life that has not in it, at some time, 
the love of man for woman, or woman for man, the 
family love, is really only half a life, a six-hour 
day, not a twelve; but I mean much more than 
this. Do you every day of your life recall to your- 
self the fact that you are one in a joint brother- 
hood ; that all men are your fellows, and that no 
one of them can suffer without its being your 
duty, if possibly within your power, to furnish 
that help ; that your fortune and your talents are 
not yours for yourself, but for all your circle, all 



226 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

with whom you are in touch ; yes, all men every- 
where. In some slight way, this hour must enter 
into every twelve. 

Fifth, pleasure. One single day without pleas- 
ure in it is like one of those days in nature, all gray. 
I do not mean by pleasure, vice, though alas, it is 
often confounded with it ; but I do mean laughter 
and fun. I do mean something that lightens the 
heart, and blows care out of the window for a 
little time. It used to be thought that if you were 
really religious you must have a long face ; but we 
have got past that and perhaps lean to the other 
side. Even the old Puritans got a great deal more 
fun out of life than you think, though much of it 
was very course fun. Life is often so hard, the day 
grinds on so heavily, do not be afraid to lighten it 
with innocent mirth and a good deal of levity. 

Sixth, business. This, of course, must be one of 
the longest of the twelve hours, and often of 
necessity must crowd upon the others. It must 
receive attention. It must have the principal por- 
tion of your time, and the larger portion of your 
thoughts ; for it is the substratum on which has to 
be built up your public and your private life. 
Preachers sometimes talk as if there~were some 
kind of a sin in a man's occupying himself with 
the things of this world, but how can he help it? 
and, indeed, ought he to help it? Is not his busi- 
ness a great school for his character, and a lever 
by which he can work in the world for others' 
good as well as for his own? No, go regularly to 



I.— THE TWELVE HOURS OF THE DAY. 227 

your business, put into it your best energies, 
transact it in the fear of God, and according to a 
strict construction of the rules of honor ; never be 
mean, truckling, or overbearing in it. God will 
then surely cry : " A well-spent hour." 



II.— THE TWELVE HOURS OF THE DAY. 

LET us continue the subject of the twelve hours 
of the day of life. We have considered six : 
prayer, worship, duty to self, duty to others, 
pleasure and business ; the seventh is rest. We are 
talking of twelve hours of day, not of night; so I 
do not mean sleep, necessary as that is. I pity the 
being who cannot get his full share of that ; and I 
warn the man who thinks he can curtail it, that 
some time or other, offended nature will rise up 
and punish him for depriving her of her rights ; but 
I do not mean that, I mean a cessation from work ; 
I mean idleness, if you choose to call the rest of a 
man who works, by that ill name. We have idlers, 
and a useless tribe they are ; but believe me, pure 
rest is just as much in the plan of God for a true 
day as any work is ; and when from force or from 
necessity, you cannot get it every day, it is wrong, 
it is against nature, and that is against God. 

Eighth, travel. Many will say the day could be 
very full, the life well lived without that, and it is 
true. One could serve God and His fellow-men 
without ever crossing the bounds of his own little 



II. — THE TWELVE HOURS OF THE DAY. 229 

village ; but we are talking now of a full, true life, 
and that needs to have in it this ingredient also. 
You need every now and then, if possible (and in 
these days, hard indeed must be your lot, if you 
cannot sometimes do it) to get away from the 
narrow precincts in which you have to live ; to get 
out of the rut into which you inevitably fall ; to 
breathe new air and see new men. I remember 
a man telling me that he came into the Church in 
a little village, where it was a small, weak, despised 
thing ; and though he heard its greatness preached 
about, he never realized it until he went to New 
York, and saw what a power it was, its splendid 
churches, its glorious services. Travel broadens 
your idea of God, and deepens j^our charity for 
man. 

Ninth, citizenship. For many of you, and this 
applies every day more and more to the educated 
and thoughtful, this part of the day is utterly 
passed by. You seem to think that from some 
source or other comes the government, and that it 
will take care of itself and you; but recollect, you 
are the government, you make it, you unmake it. 
God has put into your hands this wonderful power 
of making your laws, appointing your law-givers, 
displacing them, changing them often and as you 
will. No matter then what Turks may say as an 
excuse for letting alone any misgovernment, on the 
plea that they have no power to help it, Americans 
cannot say that. They can help it ; and any man 
who lets day after day of his life pass by without 
studying the questions of the hour, and putting in 



230 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

that powerful piece of paper to shape them this 
way or that way, deserves anarchy, deserves 
oppression, deserves to suffer from the trickery of 
politics, deserves the anger of God. 

Tenth, study. And can there not be a life with- 
out study? Yes, there can be. Oysters live and 
vegetables exist ; but is that the day a man with 
powers of soul and spirit should choose for him- 
self? We cannot all learn alike, and our Bible or 
our Shakespeare affords far more to one than to 
another, because he brings a clearer eye and a 
more discerning spirit to its study ; but there lives 
no man who cannot learn, and if he will not, he 
commits the sin of wilful ignorance, which in the 
category of sins takes a higher rank, and is stained 
with a deeper dye, than many of you think. " To 
know," is man's most splendid aspiration; and 
knowledge comes by labor. You are not born with 
it, and money will not buy it ; oh, put into your life 
this noble hour of study. Learn all you can of 
your world, of its Author, of its Saviour, of its 
destiny. The more a chastened intellect expands 
here the higher the place it takes there. 

Eleventh, society. We have to live in society, 
whether we want to do so or not. We are all 
dependent on each other, and if a man shuts him- 
self away from all human intercourse, he must 
starve ; that is inevitable. But let us get above that 
and remember that society is heaven-descended. It 
is God's way of lessening our selfishness, of round- 
ing off the rough edges of our character, of bring- 
ing out love and fidelity and friendship and mutual 



II.— THE TWELVE HOURS OF THE DAY. 231 

help. There can be no advancement without it; 
and even in a state of savagery its main principles 
are ever found. What are you doing to brighten 
it, to purify it, to elevate it? It is made up of 
individuals, and just what they are, it must be. A 
village of drunkards will have a society of brutal- 
ity and lust and filth ; a village of self-respecting, 
God-fearing men and women is a power, subtle and 
penetrating, which moves and changes far beyond 
its own limits. If you love men, go among them 
and take their hands. 

And now we reach the twelfth hour of the day, 
and it is, thought ; no life is fair and even without 
it. I do not mean thought about "what we shall 
eat, or wherewithal we shall be clothed ; but the 
asking oneself, every now and then, the solemn 
questions: "Where do I stand? To what am I 
tending ? Am I going baxkward or forward ? Do 
I grow better or worse? Am I of use, or damage, 
in the world?" Unless you have this hour and 
apply its warnings, your life will be thin and super- 
ficial, and there will be a flaw in it which will 
widen as the days go on. 

And so, hastily throwing out in each point, 
some hints to start your own reflections, have I 
traced the day of life, as it seems tome a Christian 
man should strive to have it, and for which God's 
aid ever waits. May it be your day; and may it 
draw, hour by hour, on through all the twelve, 
until the night is reached, and lo, there is no night! 
A moment of darkness, and we step out into the 
perfect day ! 



THE BESETTING SINS OF THE RICH AND OF 
THE POOR. 

I HEARD a very interesting sermon the other 
Sunday on the difficulty a rich man had in 
being a Christian. A great many rich men were 
sitting near me, and I watched their countenances 
to see how they to ok it . They listened very quietty, 
but they seemed to be saying to themselves : " Oh, 
I shall get to heaven all right, in spite of what he 
says." 

The sermon led me to think on the relative 
obstacles in the way of a religious life for a rich or 
a poor man ; and really I could not see much differ- 
ence. They appear to me pretty well balanced. 
Of course when our Lord said : "A rich man shall 
hardly enter the kingdom of heaven," He referred 
to the new kingdom He was then founding in the 
world ; and He meant as the event proved, that it 
was going to be very hard for people who were 
well to do to give all that up for the obloquy and 
persecution, and probable confiscation, which 
would come on the early professors of the Chris- 
tian Faith. 



THE BESETTING SINS OF THE RICH AND OF THE POOR. 233 

But that state of things has changed. No 
rich man, to become a very earnest and true 
Christian, is obliged to throw away his riches, or 
to change one item of his well-ordered and com- 
fortable life. I know very many rich men of the 
most simple and unostentatious characters and 
lives ; and I know many poor men who are proud 
and selfish, and a great deal more difficult than 
anj^rich. The fact is that a certain style of living, 
luxurious living, if you please, not meaning by 
that, riotous or improper living, seems to me to be 
a matter of education and environment and cus- 
tom, and by itself to have very little to do with a 
man's truth and genuineness, and devotion to re- 
ligious duty. A man used to great " style " scarcely 
notices it. It does not awaken in him a sense of 
pride and superiority. It is just a part of his 
daily life, especially if he has been born to it. I do 
not include in this a vulgar display of wealth for 
wealth's sake; silver menu cards, peaches at a 
dollar apiece, and wines of enormous cost. This is 
demoralizing indeed, but rich men do not in 
general perpetrate such follies. On the other hand, 
the not being able to have soup ever}' day, and 
having no servant, by no means implies any less 
crossness, or unselfishness, or humility. The most 
thorough worldliness co-exists with the greatest 
poverty, and the most thorough unworldliness 
with the greatest riches. One's station often 
obliges one to incur certain great expenses of liv- 
ing, dress, table, furniture, etc., but the heart is 
not of necessity bound up in these things. That is 



234 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

all I care to establish ; that riches, of necessity, do 
not make you selfish, arrogant, pleasure-loving, 
luxurious and forgetful of God. 

Riches have their great dangers, but so has 
poverty; and as I said, these dangers are pretty 
evenly balanced. Let me try to show this, first, 
about the besetting sins of riches : 

I. They blast the sense of dependence upon 
God, which is such a sweet relation. When you 
can order and obtain anything you want from 
anywhere, it is very apt to make you forget that 
everything we have comes from the hands of God ; 
that He gives us all things richly to enjoy; and 
there springs up in the unwatched heart a feeling 
that God is not necessary to you, that you can 
take care of yourself. 

II. The bootlicking which is done to rich men, 
even by the vestries of the churches where they 
take pews, is very apt to give them airs, to puff 
them up with ideas of their great importance. 
They become dictatorial, tyrannical and impa- 
tient, at not having their own way. 

III. A common effect of riches is selfishness. 
Wrapped in your own comfort, you forget the 
discomfort of others ; and in the charmed life you 
are able to lead, you lose touch with all those 
millions of lives which are not charmed, and which 
a little help from you would so greatly brighten. 

IV. The being able to gratify every desire stim- 
ulates wrong desires, and rich people often suc- 
cumb to their very great opportunities, in them- 
selves an enormous temptation. 



THE BESETTING SINS OF THE RICH AND OF THE POOR. 235 

To sum up: The besetting sins of the rich 
are pride, self-sufficiency, self-importance, luxury, 
selfish indifference to the wretchedness and poverty 
in the world, easy gratification of every desire. 
All rich men are not beset by all these, nor do they 
of necessity fall victims to any. 

Now, what are the besetting sins of the poor ? 

I. Disbelief in God. They get to think because 
there is such inequality in worldly fortune, that 
there is no superintending Providence; that religion , 
and priests, and churches, are just inventions of the 
rich to keep quiet the poor, and this world is the 
portion of the fortunate. 

II. Enviousness of and anger with those better 
off than they are. Poor people often seem to think 
some sort of injustice is done them by those who 
from one ca.use or other are able to live better 
and more comfortably. They foolishly think rich 
people hate and despise them, and they foolishly 
return that hate. 

III. A proud and very disagreeable thing called 
"independence." I have always found the self- 
importance of some journeyman a great deal more 
intolerable than the pride of the rich, because very 
bad manners generally go with it. 

IV. Selfishness in regarding only your own 
class interests, and saying since you have to look 
out for number one, \ r ou will consider no other 
number. 

V. The common temptation, besetting rich and 
poor, to yield to desire, more dangerous often in 



236 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

the poor, because coarser and tmtempered by 
refinement. 

These, then, are the besetting sins of the poor: 
Envy, covetousness, disbelief in God and the 
Church, pride, selfishness, coarse desire. 

I do not see much to choose between the two 
catalogues. The fact is that every station in life 
has its trials, and they do not vary much in power. 
Each and every one, rich or poor, must find out 
and watch these trials of his station, fight against 
them, and use God and His Church to help fight, 
and spend no time in thinking : " Oh, if I were only 
somebody else and in some other rank, I could 
do much better." 



ESPRIT DE CORPS. 

LET us talk a little about Esprit de corps. I 
wish I could use an English word for it, since 
I think it very bad taste to mix either your speech 
or your writing with foreign words ; but there is 
no exact English equivalent. The meaning we all 
know. It is being devoted to any organization to 
which you belong, the honor of every one of its 
members being your honor, the adversity or pros- 
perity of the body being part of your adversity 
and prosperity. The phrase belonged originally to 
military life; and referred to that devotion which a 
soldier is expected to feel for his regiment, for his 
company, for his captain, for his flag. It was, and 
is, thought a soldier's duty to stand up for his 
comrades under all circumstances, whether wise or 
unwise, whether involving gain or loss for himself; 
nay, he is expected to face danger and death rather 
than desert the corps of which he is a member, or 
leave one of his fellows in the lurch. I know well 
that this duty has often been carried to excess. 
Officers who had no personal cause of quarrel have 
felt bound, when the honor of a comrade or the 



238 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

fair fame of the regiment was attacked, to chal- 
lenge the assailant, fight a bloody duel, and often 
lose their lives. I do not uphold this, but I cannot 
help admiring it. 

I want, now, to apply the spirit of the phrase 
to our life and our surroundings. Have we esprit 
de corps ? Do we cultivate it as we should ? Does 
it make any difference to us what others say of 
men, and bodies of men, with which we either 
voluntarily or involuntarily are associated ? For 
example : You are an American, and by that I do 
not mean an American in the foreign sense ; for on 
the continent of Europe, Venezuelans, Brazilians, 
and Mexicans are all Americans; but I mean a child 
of the United States. Now, do you form one of 
that degenerate crowd who spend their breath in 
decrying their own country, running down its 
institutions, drawing comparisons to its discredit 
with English, French, or even Italian, ways ? 
There are such people. I have met them here and 
abroad, and they are as irritating to me as red 
peppers. I do not ask whether you play a good 
hand in the great game of " brag," with which all 
Americans are said to be so familiar; but I ask 
whether you always stand ready to break a lance 
for the honor of your country, and believe her to 
be the noblest and grandest country in the world ? 
She has faults. There are spots on the sun. But 
do you cover them up, or do you exaggerate and 
publish them ? 

There are other things, however, beside country 
which call for esprit de corps. You belong/to an 



ESPRIT DE CORPS. 239 

order. You are a carpenter, or a merchant, or a 
farmer, or a priest. I will take a priest, as illus- 
tration, and I do it because for almost all other 
orders there are " unions" and so much esprit de 
corps, that thousands of men will lay down their 
tools and walk out of their shops if the most 
insignificant and most worthless of their union, or 
whatever it may be called, is suffering anything 
the}^ consider to be unjust. We may blame the 
extremes to which this is carried, but we cannot 
help admiring the self-sacrifice it often entails. 

Now, there are no "unions" for priests, and 
very little esprit de corps. Do not imagine that I 
want such unions, or advocate priests going on 
strike, and all the other priests refusing to do any- 
thing till the brother on whom they thought the 
Bishop or the vestry were jumping, got his rights. 
That would not only be absurd, but wicked ; but I 
do advocate a strong class and caste feeling among 
those who are in Holy Orders, that they should 
stand by each other, defend each other, hide each 
other's weaknesses ; and only when strong duty 
commands it, bring to the bar of justice their erring 
brethren. The Emperor Constantine, at the Coun- 
cil of Nice, said : " If I should see a Bishop com- 
mitting mortal sin, I would not cry out. I would 
hide him in the folds of my purple. ' ' This, of course, 
was Oriental hyperbole, but I wish that we priests 
had something of the same feeling; that we felt 
more deeply our "Order," and that the corps feel- 
ing was more evident in the ranks than it is. It 
does not seem to me that I could, unless forced by 



240 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

the sternest sense of duty, ever become the perse- 
cutor of one of my brother priests. This feeling 
may appear blamable, but I think will meet with 
the approval of every manly heart. There are 
enough people to find fault with us, to misunder- 
stand our motives, to belittle our calling, to pick 
out our flaws, to twist our mistakes into formid- 
able offenses. Let us stand by each other, protect 
each other, and keep up a weak brother as long as 
we can do so without dishonor to our priestly 
vows. 

But not only priests need to think of " esprit de 
corps" but laymen. What is your Church to you, 
my lay friends ? Is it like the precinct where you 
live, something whose common honor does not lie 
very near your heart ; or is it what you sing it is in 
hymns, and spout it is at Church Club banquets — 
your mother ? If the Church be your mother, then 
ought not a mother's honor, a mother's fair fame, 
to be the very dearest thing you know ? Ought you 
not to respect that mother's commands, even if 
they do not always chime in with your views ? 

Let our Church be for us not simply a moral 
club, not simply a conventionality, but something 
for which we are willing to peril our ease, our for- 
tunes, and, if need be, our lives. 



A MAN THE HEAD OF HIS HOUSE. 

ONCE upon a time, centuries on centuries ago, 
an old man stood up before a large assem- 
blage of people, and, after a speech full of earnest 
words, used this sentence: "As for me and my 
house, we will serve the Lord." Now, remember, 
a man said this in his capacity as head of his 
house. "Nothing strange in that," you say. "Is 
not a man always the head of his house? " Well, 
it used to be thought so, and it is good Bible 
doctrine that it is so ; but you must confess that 
our talking sisters seem to teach that it is only so 
with very great qualifications, and to think it so 
is a good deal of a superstition. Now, the news- 
papers seem to think this is very funny ; and they 
have added to their stock subjects for jokes, such 
as the summer vacations of the clerg3 r , and the 
young men who stay late courting, this one of the 
"new woman." 

To me, however, the situation seems very 
serious. I read in my Bible such words as these: 
"I suffer not the woman to teach, nor to usurp 
authority over the man, but to be in silence ; for 
Adam was first formed, then Eve." 



242 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

"The head of every man is Christ, the head of 
the woman is the man." 

"The man is the image and glory of God, but 
the woman is the glory of the man." 

"For the man is not of the woman, but the 
woman of the man." 

These are hard nuts to crack. No wonder so many 
women nowadays say they are rotten nuts, and 
not worth the cracking. But, my friends, they are 
good, sound nuts, and the meat in them amounts 
to this: that it is a God appointed thing that a 
man should be the head of the house, in the State, 
in the Church, in the society, in the home. 

But let us leave the general question. "My 
house " certainly means " my family." Let us stick 
close to that. Because a man is the head it does 
not follow as a matter of course that he is always 
a good head. Often he is a totally unworthy one, 
and then how the family suffers. It is just like a 
sick physical head. When that comes about, the 
hands grasp only feebly, the feet seem loaded with 
a ball and chain, the nerves jar and jangle like 
some ruined harp. In such cases what a blessing- 
it is if the wife can step in and take the headship , 
and save the family from ruin. To recognize a 
headship does not imply, as these preaching females 
teach, a cringing servitude, or a servile obedience. 
I recognize the President of the United States as 
my civil head, and the Bishop of Chicago as my 
ecclesiastical head; and I " order myself lowly and 
reverently to them, as my betters," but I do not 
cringe to them, or give up my rights to them, or 



A MAN THE HEAD OF HIS HOUSE. 243 

submit tamely to tyranny on their part. Nor 
should the wife to the one who miserably performs 
his duty as the head. No husband can compel a 
wife to do wrong. He may see fit to laugh at God 
and all holy things ; he cannot force her to do so. 
He is bound to respect all her rights of conscience, 
and her duty to her children and her obligations to 
the society in which she lives. She certainly has 
reserved rights which she does not give up in mar- 
riage. But all this does not impugn the statements 
of the Bible that the man is the head of the house. 

And now, my man, what sort of ahead are you? 
What sort of a head is he who spends his leisure 
time in carousing, in running after strange women, 
in playing the pot-house politician ? What sort of 
a head is he who, never at home, becomes a sort of 
myth to his children, who hear of their father, but 
never see him ? What sort of a head is he whom 
every one in the house must feel is a selfish, grasp- 
ing creature; who thinks everything in the house is 
for him and his comfort alone ? The children must 
not make a noise, and no one must have any par- 
ticular enjoyment if it interferes with his ideas or 
whims. Oh, the mockeries of heads these are, and 
yet such awful consequences hang upon the good 
or bad direction of families. 

Charles Dudley Warner, in his charming articles 
on Chicago, speaking of the homes, says: "A 
stranger will be surprised to find in a city so new 
so many homes pervaded by the atmosphere of 
books, and art, and refined sensibility. There is so 
much here that is in exquisite taste that one has a 



244 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

hopeful heart about the future." This is very 
pretty and very true, and, above all, very tickling 
to the Chicago palate ; but are the heads of these 
homes inscribing over them : " As for me and my 
house, we will serve the Lord " ? Are you, head, 
in your representative character, doing that, or 
does ' ' me, ' ' in your case, mean your wife ? It is all 
right that she should do it, but you — you can go 
on shirking your religious obligations ; you can 
remain deaf to the voice of the Church; you can be 
blind to private prayer and public profession — all 
these you can get on without. " Am I not a good 
head ? " you say. " I provide well for my family's 
needs. I personalty attend to their education. I 
set them an example of clean living and honest 
dealing. Is not that serving the Lord?" Yes, it 
is, but it is only a half service. How about family 
prayer? How about being at the head of the seat 
on Sundays ? How about going up to the altar ? 
How about a life avowed to be after the pattern 
of the Gospel? 

Nothing is going to save this land from moral 
wreck but the heads of houses standing up and 
saying: " As for me and my house, we will serve 
the Lord." 



THE FAILURES OF INFIDELITY. 

IN the May Forum, 1896, the ratio of increase of 
communicants with that of the population of 
the country is compared, and the advantage is 
found to be very greatly with the churches. The 
percentage of increase in population for the decade 
ending in 1890, was 24.86. The increase for the 
past five years has not been as great, but we will 
assume that it has been, and put it at 12.43. 
But the growth of the churches since 1890 has 
been at the rate of 20 per cent. It is clear that the 
churches are gaining on the population rapidly 
and steadily. 

Items like these from a paper certainly with no 
great prepossessions in favor of Orthodox Chris- 
tianity, must make the infidels and the agnostics, 
and the Ingersollites and the new women, and 
Gebal and Ammon and Amalek, very mad indeed. 
They are continually blowing trumpets to call the 
world to see Christianity squelched; and then 
when the world comes, they are forced to cry, like 
the Pharisees, "Behold, the world is gone after 
Him." It is really pitiable to see people try so 



246 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

hard to sweep the ocean out with a broom, and 
make so little headway. I often wonder how, in 
the face of the Christian Church, they have the 
courage to persevere. Her history, the knowledge 
of the way along which she has come, her trials, 
her oppositions, and her present flourishing state, 
it seems to me, must force any sensible man to say, 
" There is something that is not of the earth in this 
thing, or else it would have perished with the 
thousand empires, dj^nasties, systems, and schemes 
which have risen above the horizon, shone for a 
while, and then gone out forever." Its worst foes 
always have been, and are now, inside of it, among 
Christians themselves ; but that does not prevent 
its multiplying like the sands of the sea. 

Consider the state of things now. Some of the 
most gifted men in the world are trying hard to talk 
Christianity down. Books are published every 
month which prove as clear as daylight that it is all 
a delusion ; great governments, like that of France, 
do all they can to lessen its influence; scientific 
men show in eloquent lectures that there cannot 
even be a God, let alone a Saviour. Reverend gen- 
tlemen prove the Bible to be full of faults and con- 
tradictions and inconsistencies, and our dear Lord 
to be only a highly gifted man ; and yet here is the 
Christian Church, not a senile, palsied, trembling 
old hag, but a young, beautiful boy, whose healthy 
blood heals in a month or two the deepest wounds, 
and who stands erect, laughing at his foes. 

I pity you, you whose noses are turned up at 
Christianity. I really pity you ; for as you look at 



THE FAILURES OF INFIDELITY. 247 

the numberless churches everywhere going up, the 
ever-increasing flock of missionaries, the splendid 
army of young men serving under the banner of 
Christ, the enormous sums everywhere given for 
enterprises under the invocation of Christ, it must 
be such a disappointment, it must convey such a 
bitter sense of failure, it must seem such a madden- 
ing incomprehensibility^, to find that Christianity 
will not be killed ; that although you have shown 
a thousand times how foolish it is, how narrow- 
ing, how unreasonable, that sensible men certainl\ r 
must give it up, they will not do it, they will stick 
to it, they will get baptized, will take Christ for 
their Master, will say they are sinners, will go to 
the Cross for forgiveness. 

Why don't you infidel people show us some- 
thing better than Christianity ? We are not fools, 
we do not usually throw away good things when 
we see them. Show us a better religion (for a 
religion of some kind man must have, you do not 
need to be told that) than this old Bible religion, 
set forth in the Creed, taught in the Sacraments, 
shown in the Church, and we will surely adopt it. 
This is a free country, we are not forced to be 
Christians to get a place in society, or to succeed 
in business. I grant it used to be so, and I grant 
that man}- people just said they were Christians 
for such purposes ; but you fellows have done this 
much good, you have knocked that plaster image 
to pieces ; and an 3^ one can be perfectly respectable 
and, if rich, receive all possible honor, without the 
slightest affectation of Christianity. It is not un- 



248 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

common now to hear boys just out of knickerbock- 
ers declare themselves agnostics ; and if that word 
be synonymous with ignoramuses, they well de- 
scribe themselves. We can then all profess your 
opinions without doing our worldly state any 
harm, but why don't we ? Answer that ! But you 
know you cannot, and it must make you very 
angry. Why don't you give up and go into more 
profitable business ? 

God knows our presentation of Christianity is 
often poor enough, and distorted enough, and 
mean enough, when compared with our great 
Founder's teaching and example; but such as it is, 
it grips men as all your salves and lotions, and 
porous plasters and anodynes fail to do. How 
you must chafe under this, and ask each other 
when you meet, " Why do we not make more head- 
way against this wretched Christianity? " I will 
tell you why : " Because it is from God, and neither 
you, nor I, nor all the world, can put it down." 



INSPIRATION. 

MOST people connect i ' inspiration " only with 
the Apostles and patriarchs and prophets ; 
but we make a great mistake by cherishing any 
such narrow view as that, just because our grand- 
fathers held it, or our old rector used to preach it, 
when we were children. Inspiration has a far 
nobler meaning than that. The breath of God has 
been breathed out more fully than that. The wind 
of God has blown further and wider than within 
those limits. We too often connect God only with 
religion and religious things ; and we forget to con- 
nect Him with the painting of pictures, the evolu- 
tion of steam engines, the logic and argument of 
philosophies. We have forgotten that ever}' good 
thing comes from God, whether religious or 
secular ; that no wild savage could think a good 
thought unless the Spirit of God was breathed 
into him; that every thing that is not purely 
animal, everything that belongs to man as dis- 
tinguished from brutes, is by inspiration of God, is 
just the everlasting breathing of Him who breathed 
the first spiritual breath into the first lump of clay, 



250 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

whatever form it had, and whatever instincts it 
already possessed; of Him who breathed, long 
after that, on the Apostles. 

So, when the first man had the idea of a better 
knife, or a better spear, it was by inspiration of 
God. When he first began to speak some rude 
verse, or strike some poor harp— a string across a 
turtle shell, two sticks of wood beaten in har- 
mony, — it was an inspiration. When he first 
stooped down by a fallen foe, and gave him water, 
orboundup his wounds, it was an inspiration. The 
first love that was not lust was an inspiration. 
Every invention, every poem, every act of gener- 
osity, or unselfishness, everything that animals 
cannot do, is by the inspiration of God. Our 
natural breath we have as the brutes have; but 
our breath of mind, of soul, of spirit, is our special 
breathing upon by the Hol} T Ghost. We use this 
word "inspiration" — and very rightly— for any 
extraordinary work. When an orator says some- 
thing very brilliant and uplifting, we say, " He 
seems inspired." When a very wonderful inven- 
tion is given to man, we cry out, " What an inspi- 
ration." We say of a great singer, "She was 
most inspiring." And above all, of some books 
which have been written, we say: "The writers 
appeared to have been inspired — to have had their 
eyes and their ears opened as no other men ever 
had; to have had their souls illumined as ordinary 
men never experienced." 

Now, the inspiration of the Bible is something 
of the same kind, only in an immeasurably greater 



INSPIRATION. 251 

degree. Above all other books that ever were 
written, these books bear the traces of the breath- 
ing of God, because, better and greater than all 
other books, they teach us how to live aright, how 
to think of God, how to understand the world ; 
above all, they reveal to us the character of Jesus 
Christ, the Ideal of humanity, the Incarnation of 
God. I do not say no other book ever was 
inspired. We are right when we speak of the 
inspiration of Shakespeare and Dante. But I do 
say that far above all other books is the Bible the 
breath of God ; and it, separate from all other 
books, can be called the Word of God. 

No matter about the scientific mistakes of the 
Bible, and they are many; or the historical con- 
tradictions, and they are not a few; or the con- 
fused numbers, or the difficulties of authorship, or 
the whole business of what is called the " Higher 
Criticism;" they do not invalidate the glorious 
inspiration of the Bible am- more than Dante's 
absurd notions about astronomy, or Shakespeare's 
making Bohemia a country with a sea coast, 
invalidate their inspiration. The Bible has been 
inspired by God to teach me how to live and whom 
to follow, and how to get near Him. What 
matter about its opinions about other things? 
Concerning those awful things it is my best, my only 
guide, and for these I cling to it as God's best gift 
to me. Inspiration, remember, belongs to \ r ou, no 
matter how dull you maj T be, just as to the great- 
est genius in the world ; and just as the amount of 
fresh air in a house will depend on the doors and 



252 FIVE MINUTE TALKS. 

windows cut in, or whether it is planted in a 
canyon, or set on a hill, so the amount of inspira- 
tion you will get will depend on your capacity to 
receive; and if you have only a limited capacity, 
whether you try to give it a chance. 

The wind of God is always blowing. The Holy 
Spirit is always breathing, but it cannot get into 
shut-up places, barred and bolted to keep all air 
out. Is your life like that ? People, to get air, go 
where air is. Are you going where you are sure 
to find the wind of the Spirit? It blows in the 
Church, it blows in the Sacraments, it stirs and 
freshens every ordinance and ritual arrangement. 
Do you put yourself in the way of it ? " But I can- 
not see it," you say. Well, you cannot even see 
the wind that stirs your hair. Who can see heat, 
who can see the force behind all other forces, for 
which men of science are groping? They know it, 
but no one can see it. You can feel it, if you open 
your heart and let it in. 

Call on the wind of God to come and blow away 
your prejudices, your objections, your arguings. 
Ask it to melt the ice around your heart. Come, 
wind of the Spirit, come, " inspiration of God," 
and blow away our evil tempers, our lust, our 
sloth, our pride. Sweep the floor clean, and make 
room for Christ and for better things. 



REASONS FOR BEING A CHURCHMAN. 

Addressed to English-speaking Christians of Every 
Name. 

By The Rev. Arthur Wilde Little, L. H. D., Rector 
of St. Mark's Church, Evanston, 111. Paper, net, .50 ; 
cloth, net, #1.00. 

"Those of our readers, both clerical and lay, who are not in pos- 
session of this invaluable treatise upon the Anglican Church should 
certainly lose no time in procuring a copy. Without exception, we 
know of no work which deals with the subject in so exhaustive and 
able a manner. It was highly recommended by the late Principal of 
Moore College, and its sale in England and the United States has far 
exceeded any book of its kind." — Sydney (Australia) Banner. 

SOME AMERICAN CHURCHMEN. 

By Frederic Cook Morehouse. Cloth, net, $1.00. 

Contains Biographical sketches of Samuel Seabury, 
William White, John Henry Hobart, Philander Chase, 
George Washington Doane, Jackson Kemper, John Henry 
Hopkins, William Augustus Muhlenberg, James Lloyd 
Breck, and James DeKoven; with full page portrait 
of each. 

"Mr. Morehouse has given us an exceedingly interesting book in 
this little work. From amongst the great men who have adorned the 
American Church he has selected ten men who have made their mark 
in the history of the Church, and in the brief space at his disposal 
has given an account of the special work in which they severally 
aided in building up the Church. Church history is perhaps more 
pleasantly learned in the lives of the men who have helped to make 
it than in any other way, and Churchmen generally will be glad to 
have a volume so full of valuable information respecting the growth 
and development of the Church as seen in these brief sketches." — 
Canadian Churchman. 



Published by 

THE YOUNG CHURCHMAN CO.. 

Milwaukee, Wis. 



Three Books by John F. Spalding, D.D., 
Bishop of Colorado. 



THE CHURCH AND ITS APOSTOLIC MINISTRY. 

Net, $1.00. 

"It will doubtless take its place among other books of the same 
character, as a cheerful, temperate statement of the Church's position 
and claims as they are understood and held to be by the ' moderate' 
school of High Churchmen. The arrangement of the Historical 
proofs of the Apostolicity of the Church's Ministry is very clear 
and concise, and, while in popular form, as we have said, there is no 
'ad captandum' praise, blame, or criticism. The manner of the book 
is kindly and conciliatory, though clear." — 5/. Louis Church News. 

THE BEST MODE OF WORKING A PARISH. 

A course of Lectures. Net, $1.00; by mail, $1.10. 

"Experience, reflection, sound sense and a thoroughly Catholic 
spirit enter into these discussions in about equal proportions. They 
are suited to clergy and laity everywhere, especially to young pastors 
and to the rising and spreading communities where the author is 
effectually planting the Church." — Gospel Messenger. 

JESUS CHRIST THE PROOF OF CHRISTIANITY. 
A course of Lectures. Net, $1.00; by mail, $1.10. 

"This book contains twelve admirable sermons on sound and or- 
thodox Anglo-Catholic lines, and quite in keeping with the most 
modern and — in the true sense— advanced critical knowledge of our 
fay "—Church Review (London). 



NOTES FOR MEDITATION ON THE COLLECTS, 

FOR SUNDAYS AND HOLY DAYS. 

By the Rt. Rev. A. C. A. Hall, D.D., Bishop of 
Vermont. Net, $ 1 .00 ; by mail, $1.10. 
Thoughts and inspirations drawn from each of the 
Collects. 

Published by 
THE YOUNG CHURCHMAN CO., 

Milwaukee, Wis. 



WHAT IS MODERN ROMANISM ? 

An examination of those portions of Holy Scripture 
which have alleged bearings on the claims of the Church 
of Rome. 

By George Franklin Seymour, D.D., LL.D., 
Bishop of Springfield. Net, .75 ; by mail, .80. 

"Bishop Seymour is on some accounts peculiarly fitted to discuss 
the question raised in the title to this book. It is only the alleged 
Scripture grounds of Romanism that are here examined; and of all 
the doctrines or positions peculiar to Romanism, the Papal Suprem- 
acy is the only one considered. The author's view is that the whole 
system stands or falls with the claim that the Bishop of Rome, as 
successor to St. Peter, is of Divine right the supreme and infallible 
head of the Church, the vicar of Christ. . . . There is a fresh- 
ness and pointedness in the Bishop's way of putting it that is origi- 
nal. ... In fact it may be said that the Bishop of Springfield 
has utterly disposed of Roman Scriptural claims, root and branch." 
— Pacific Churchman. 

THE CHURCH IN THE PRAYER BOOK. 

A Layman's brief Review of Worship. With introduc- 
tion by the Rev. Samuel Hart, D.D. 

By Edward L. Temple. Cloth, net, $1.25. 

"There are any number of works elucidatory of the Prayer Book, 
but the larger number are written by clerymen. Mr. Temple was a 
member of the General Convention during the whole of the long 
period the work of revision was in progress, and this book is the 
result of his scholarly and profound study of the subject. Every 
page bears witness to careful examination of facts, and equally care- 
ful weighing of them before arriving at a conclusion. A spirit of 
thorough loyalty to the Prayer Book pervades it throughout. It is 
especially valuable at this time, because it explains with such perfect 
clearness the alterations made at the last revision, and the reasons for 
them. It has the further merit of a clear style, which is by no means 
the least of its advantages." — Pacific Churchman. 



Published by 
THE YOUNG CHURCHMAN CO. 

Milwaukee, Wis. 



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